TiiE  Contemporary 

Science  Series 


;hilD:  a  Study  in 
THE  Evolution  of  Man 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT   OF   CAPT   AND    MRS. 
PAUL  MCBRIDE  PERIGORD 


L  Id 

n  1 5^ 


UNIVERSITY  of  CALIFORNIA 

AT 
LOS  ANr;KT.R«  / 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2008  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/childstudyinevolOOcham 


THE  CONTEMPORAR  V  SCIENCE  SERIES. 
Edited  by  HAVELOCK  ELLIS. 


THE   CHILD 


CHILDHOOD. 

The  picture  here  given  (that  of  an  Ainti  ican  boy,  four  years  and  four  months  old)  might 
stand  for  the  child-type  in  its  most  genial  form  and  expression. 

{Frontispiece, 


THE   CHILD 

A  STUDY  IN  Tim  LVOLUITOX  OF  MAN 


BY 


ALEXANDER  FRANCIS  CHAMBERLAIN,  M.A.,  Pii.D 

Assistant  Pkofessor  ok  Antmropoi  08V  in  Clark  University, 
W'oKCEsii-R,  Mass. 


ILLUSTRATED 


SECOND    EDITION 


THE  WALTER  SCOTT  PUBLISHING  CO.,  LTD. 

PATERNOSTER  SQUARE,  LONDON,  E.G. 

CHARLES     SCRIBNER'S     SONS 

597    FIFTH   AVFNUF,    NEW   YORK 

igi7 


A^ 
^ 


C  3Sca 


TO   HIS  WIFE 

ISABEL 

WITHOUT  WHOSE   AID   AND   INSPIRATION   THIS   BOOK   COULD 

NEVER    HAVE    BEEN   WRITTEN,    IT   IS   LOVINGLY   DEDICATED    BY   THE   AUTHOR 

AND   TO   THE 

Rev.   GEORGE  W.  KENT 

OF   WORCESTER,    MASS. 

IN    RECOGNITION    OF   THE    FRIENDSHIP   OF   MANY   YEARS,   WITH 

ITS   NEVER-TO-BE-FORGOTTEN    ASSOCIATIONS 


PREFACE 

This     volume,      which     is     neither     a     treatise 

on    embryology,    nor   an    essay    in    anatomy   or 

physiological  psychology,  is  intended  as  a  study 

^  of  the   child    in    the    light    of  the    literature   of 

r-i  evolution,  an  attempt  to  record  and,  if  possible, 

H  interpret    some    of    the    most    interesting    and 

^  important    phenomena   of  human    beginnings  in 

Xi  the  individual  and  in  the  race. 

^'         In  his  examination  and   consideration  of  the 

^  numerous    authorities     consulted     and     theories 

.  investigated,     the    author    has     constantly     en- 

'"  deavoured   to    be  fair-minded  and  just,    and  has 

often   preferred   to  retain  the  ipsissima  verba  of 

those  who  have  said  certain  things  well   rather 

than  to  weaken  or  condense  the  argument. 

Wherever  it  has  been  possible,  exactitude  in 
reference  has  been  practised,  and  the  Biblio- 
graphy will,  it  is  hoped,  serve  as  a  guide  to 
the     evolutionary    literature     of     the     child    in 


Vlll  PREFACE 

respect  of  matters  discussed  in  these  pages. 
To  his  colleagues  in  the  University,  especially 
to  President  G.  Stanley  Hall  and  Dr  W.  H. 
Burnham,  the  author  expresses  his  gratitude  for 
many  kindnesses  in  the  way  of  advice  and 
suggestion,  the  loan  of  books  and  articles,  and 
such  other  courtesies  as  smooth  the  path  of  the 
scientist.  His  thanks  are  also  due  to  Mr  Have- 
lock  Ellis,  the  Editor  of  the  Contemporary  Science 
Series,  for  many  valuable  suggestions,  and  to  Mr 
Louis  N.  Wilson,  the  Librarian  of  the  University, 
for  the  liberality  with  which  he  has  placed  at  his 
disposal  books  otherwise  unobtainable. 

To  the  authorities  of  the  Bureau  of  American 
Ethnology,  the  U.S.  National  Museum  in  Wash- 
ington, D.C.,  and  the  Provincial  Archaeological 
Museum  of  Ontario,  the  author  returns  his  thanks 
for  the  readiness  with  which  they  have  granted 
permission  to  reproduce  certain  illustrations  from 

their  reports. 

A.   F.  C. 

January  1 900. 


TABLE   OF  CONTENTS 


CHAP.  '**^^ 

I.  The  Meaning  of  the  Helplessness  of  Infancy,  ,  i 

II.  The  Meaning  of  Youth  and  Play,       .  .  ►        id 

III.  The  Resemblances  of  the  Young,         .  ,  ,        29 

IV.  The  Periods  of  Childhood,        .           .           .  •        5^ 
V.  The  Language  of  Childhood,    ,           ,           ,  .107 

VI.  The  Arts  of  Childhood,  .  ,  .  .  •      I73 

VII.  The  Child  as  Revealer  of  the  Past,  .  .      213 

VIII.  The  Child  and  the  Savage,       ,  .  .  .287 

IX.  The  Child  and  the  Criminal,   .  .  .  -355 

X.  The  Child  and  Woman,  ,  .  .  .  -397 

XI.  Summary  and  Conclusion,  ....      441 

Bibliography,        .......      465 

Index,  ,.,....•      497 


LIST  OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 

Childhood, Frontispiece 

PACiE 

Eskimo  Child  (from  Rep.   U.S.  Bur.  of  Educ,  1894),  .  .        28 

Periods  in  the  Development  of  a  Laugh  (from  Photograph 

in  possession  of  Dr  G.  Stanley  Hall),  .  .  -5° 

'Green  Old  Age'  among  the  Ainu   of  Japan   (from  Rep. 

U.S.  Naf.  A/us.,  1890), 104 

Infantile  Cry,  the  Origin  of  Speech   (from  Wilson,   687, 

p.  516) '°6 

Trimitive  Representations  of  Speech— Ancient  Mexican 

and  Modern  Ojibwa  (from  Rip.  Bur.  Ethnol),  1889-90,        106 

Drawing  of  Hen  by  Six-year-old  Child,      .  .  .172 

Drawing  of  Grouse  by  Kootenay  Indian,    .  .  .172 

Drawing  of  Man  by  Six-year-old  Child,     .  .  .190 

Drawing  of  Woman  by  Six-year-old  Child,  .  .      191 

Drawing  of  Sunset  by  Kootenay  Indian,     .  .  .      i94 

Drawing  of  Coyote  or  Prairie  Wolf  by  Kootenay  Indian      195 

Drawing  by  Six-year-old  Girl,           .           .  •  •      206 

The  Borderland  of  Atavism.  A  '  soft  tail '  on  a  Chinese  Boy 
8  years  old  (drawn  by  R.  A.  Cushman  from  Figure  in 
Bull.  Soc.  ifAnlhr.  de  Paris,   1872,  p.  540),  .  .212 


Xll  LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

A  Young   Barbarian.      A  Pueblo  Indian  Girl,   aged  about   15 

(from  Rep.    U.S.  Nat.   Mm.,  Vol.   VIII.),    ,  .  .286 

Thk  '  Bear  Mother.'  Slate  Carving  of  Haida  Indians,  repre- 
senting the  agony  of  the  mother  in  suckling  her  cliild, 
half-human,  half-animal  (from  Jiep.   U.S.  Nat.  Mtts.,  1888),       354 

Ainu  Girl  (from  AV/.   U.S.  Nat.  Mus.,  1890),  .  .  .       396 

The  Late  Chief  'Vanishing  Smoke,'  of  the  Mohawks  of 
THE  Grand  River,  Ontario,  Canada  (from  Rep.  Prov. 
ArchcEol.  Mus.,   Ontario^   1898),         .  .  .  .416 

Alaskan  Eskimo  Gikl  (from  Rep.  U.S.  Com/n.  of  Educ,  1894),      434 


THE     CHILD 

CHAPTER   I 

THE   MEANING   OF   THE    HELPLESSNESS    OF    INFANCY 

J/a«  at  Birth. — How  far  man  is  from  perfection  when  he 
begins  hfe  has  been  described  by  the  old  Latin  philosopher, 
Lucretius,  who  wrote  so  many  strangely  modern  things  about 
the  childhood  of  the  race  and  the  childhood  of  the  individual : 
'  A  child  at  its  birth,  like  a  mariner  cast  ashore  by  the  angry 
waves,  lies  prostrate  on  the  earth,  naked,  speechless,  destitute 
of  all  the  aids  to  existence,  from  the  moment  when  it  reaches 
the  shores  of  light,  torn  from  its  mother's  bosom  by  the  efforts  of 
nature  ;  and  it  fills  the  place  it  has  entered  with  dismal  wailings.'  ^ 

Major  J.  W.  Powell,  in  his  sketch  of  man's  progress,  From 
Barbarism  to  Civilisation  (505,  p.  97),  puts  the  same  thought 
into  somewhat  different  w^ords  :  '  Every  child  is  born  destitute 
of  things  possessed  in  manhood,  which  distinguish  him  from 
the  lower  animals.  Of  all  industries  he  is  artless ;  of  all  institu- 
tions he  is  lawless;  of  all  languages  he  is  speechless;  of  all 
philosophies  he  is  opinionless ;  of  all  reasoning  he  is  thought- 
less ;  but  arts,  institutions,  languages,  opinions  and  mentations 
he  acquires  as  the  years  go  by  from  childhood  to  manhood. 
In  all  these  respects  the  new-born  babe  is  hardly  the  peer  of 
the  new-born  beast ;  but,  as  the  years  pass,  ever  and  ever  he 
exhibits  his  superiority  in  all  of  the  great  classes  of  activities, 
until  the  distance  by  which  he  is  separated  from  the  brute  is  so 
great  that  his  realm  of  existence  is  in  another  kingdom  of  nature.' 

The  meaning  of  the  helplessness  of  the  human  babe  has 
only  become  apparent  within  our  own  century  ;  it  has  taken  the 
philosophers  long  to  appreciate  the  full  significance  of  the  pro- 
longation of  human  infancy.  With  the  ancient  writers,  as  with 
many  primitive  peoples,  the  weakness  and  hapless  condition  of 
1  Dc  Rcrum  Nahird,  Bk.  V. 


2  THE   CHILD 

the  very  young  child  so  impressed  themselves  upon  them  that 
their  real  meaning  was  undiscovered.  Indeed,  the  play  of  the 
active  boy  and  girl  was  earlier  and  more  correctly  interpreted 
than  the  enforced  inactivity  of  the  infant.  Mythology,  and, 
later,  false  theology,  complicated  the  subject,  and  when  science 
grew  to  be  strong  it  almost  forgot  the  little  child  in  the  multi- 
tude of  its  other  interesting  and  absorbing  subjects  of  research. 

Prolongation  of  Human  Infa7icy. — Nevertheless,  as  Professor 
Butler  has  recently  pointed  out,  the  doctrine  of  the  prolonga- 
tion of  human  infancy,  which  Professor  John  Fiske  has  so  ably 
shown  to  be  part  of  the  theory  of  evolution,  was  anticipated 
by  Anaximander  of  Miletus,  who  flourished  about  565  b.c. 
Professor  Butler's  discovery,  however,  was  itself  anticipated  by 
Burnet  in  his  Early  Greek  Philosophy  (95,  p.  74)  by  a  couple 
of  years.  Burnet,  after  quoting  the  Theophrastean  account 
of  the  speculations  of  Anaximander  concerning  the  origin  of 
man, — '  Further,  he  says  that  in  the  beginning  man  was  born 
from  animals  of  a  different  species'  [was  like  a  fish  in  the  begin- 
ning]. '  His  reason  is,  that,  while  other  animals  quickly  find 
food  for  themselves,  man  alone  requires  a  prolonged  period  of 
suckling.  Hence,  had  he  been  originally  such  as  he  is  now,  he 
could  never  have  survived,' — observes  '  the  reference  to  the 
long  period  of  nursing  required  by  the  offspring  of  the  human 
race  really  contains  a  very  acute  piece  of  scientific  reasoning.' 

But  the  credit  of  the  scientific  interpretation  of  the  prolonga- 
tion of  human  infancy  is  still  due  to  Professor  John  Fiske,  who, 
in  his  Outlines  of  Cosmic  Philosophy,  which  was  published  in 
1874,  was  the  first  to  indicate  its  true  significance  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  humanity.  Darwin,  with  overwhelming  evidence,  had 
shown  how  man's  physical  organism  had  evolved  from  the 
creatures  beneath  him,  the  anthropoid  apes  being  his  nearest 
congeners;  Wallace  had  shown  how  the  next  fact  to  exhibit 
the  operation  of  natural  selection  in  the  development  of  man 
was  his  intelligence,  whose  variations  now  began  to  be  of  more 
importance  and  utility  than  mere  variations  of  bodily  structure. 
Instead  of  brute  force,  mental  acuteness  enabled  man  to  sur- 
vive, and  his  intelHgence  spent  itself  in  the  invention  of  devices 
(clothing,  implements  and  weapons,  food  preparation,  etc.), 
which  became  his  salvation  to  a  greater  extent  than  had  been 
hairy  covering,  strong  limb,  or  fleetncss  of  foot  r  he  was  learn- 
ing how  to  live  by  his  wits.  Naturally  enough,  as  his  intelli- 
gence continued  to  augment,  the  skilful  hand  and  the  new-born 


MEANING   OF   THE    HELPLESSNESS   OF    INFANCY      3 

mind  interacting,  the  size  and  complexity  of  the  brain  of  man 
increased  also,  and  the  more  perfect  organisation  of  the  think- 
ing part  in  adult  age  had,  as  a  necessity,  to  be  preceded  by  a 
very  much  less  definite  organisation  at  birth.  Hence,  argued 
Mr  Fiske,  the  phenomenon  of  human  infancy,  so  strikingly 
different  from  that  of  the  rest  of  the  animal  world. 

Infant  Alan  and  Infant  Aninials. — A  comparatively  witless 
infancy  must  augur  the  high  intellectual  achievements  of  the 
men  and  women  of  the  race.  What  a  vast  change  from  the 
amoeba,  at  the  beginning  of  the  animal  scale,  to  the  human 
infant  at  the  top.  There  parent  and  offspring  are  practically 
one,  with  no  immaturity  and  no  need  of  education.  And 
between  the  two  lie  all  varieties  of  animal  kind,  with  ever- 
increasing  complexity  of  structure  and  intelligence  in  the  adult, 
and  ever-lengthening  infancy  and  childhood  in  the  offspring. 
To  use  the  apt  words  of  Principal  Russell  (291,  p.  xix.) :  'It 
is  written  that  he  is  "born  like  the  wild  ass's  colt";  but  this 
overstates  the  fact  in  his  favour,  for  the  wild  ass's  colt  is  greatly 
his  superior  at  birth.  The  human  infant  is,  in  truth,  much  more 
on  a  par  with  the  lowly  marsupials,  the  kangaroo  and  opossum, 
and  requires  for  a  longer  period  even  than  they  the  maternal 
contact,  the  warmth  and  shelter  of  the  mother's  arms.  And  not 
only  does  man  thus  begin  life  at  the  very  bottom  of  the  ladder,  but 
he  "  crawls  to  maturity  "  at  a  slower  pace  by  far  than  any  of  the 
animal  species.  I^ong  before  he  reaches  manhood  most  of  the 
brute  contemporaries  and  playmates  of  his  infant  years  will  have 
had  their  day,  and  declined  into  decrepitude  or  died  of  old  age.' 

How  man  has  lingered  in  being  born  may  be  seen  from  a 
glance  at  the  following  table,  which  contains  the  incubation 
periods  or  gestation  periods  for  man  and  other  animals  : — 


Animal. 

Period. 

Animal. 

Period 

Animal. 

Period. 

Coluber 

12  days 

Guinea-pig 

7  weeks 

Sheep 

21  weeks 

Hen 

21     ,, 

Cat 

8      ,, 

Goat 

22      ,, 

Duck 

21     ,, 

Marten 

8      ,, 

Bear 

39    ,. 

Goose 

29     ., 

Dog 

9      ,, 

Small  Apes 

39     „ 

Stork 

42     ,, 

Fox 

9      ,> 

Deer 

36  40  w'ks. 

Cassowary 

65.    „ 

Foumart 

9      ,, 

Woman 

40 

Mouse 

24     ,. 

Badger 

10    ,, 

Horse 

1 1  months 

Rabbit 

32     „ 

Wolf 

10    ,, 

Camel 

II        ), 

Hare 

32     ,, 

Lion 

14    ,, 

Rhinoceros 

18       „ 

Rat 

5    weeks 

I'ig 

17    „ 

Elephant 

24       ,. 

4  THE   CHILD 

It  will  be  noticed  that  the  small  apss  and  some  deer  approach 
man  very  closely  in  the  period  of  gestation,  while  the  horse, 
camel,  and  especially  the  elephant  and  the  rhinoceros,  exceed 
man  considerably.  The  prolongation  of  gestation  must  stand 
in  some  relation  to  the  particular  si)ecies  of  animal  in  question, 
and  be  connected  with  its  evolution.  Man's  social  environ- 
ment is  trusted  to  protect  the  helpless  infancy  into  which  he  is 
born,  not  his  physical  strength  or  his  lower  instincts  as  in  the 
case  of  many  animals. 

Much  interesting  information  concerning  the  physical  and 
psychical  development  of  young  animals  is  contained  in  Pro- 
fessor Wesley  Mills's  study  of  the  Nature  arid  Development  of 
Animal  Intelligence,  where  some  of  the  relativities  and  some 
of  the  genialities  of  animal  life  are  well  discussed.  Of  the  dog 
we  are  told  '  as  soon  as  a  puppy  is  born  it  is  capable  of  cries, 
crawling  and  sucking,  and,  if  we  except  those  concerned  with 
the  vital  or  vegetative  function,  these  about  cover  all  its  pos- 
sible movements.  Up  to  the  period  when  the  eyes  open  there 
are  no  new  movements,'  and,  again, '  indeed,  after  the  fiftieth  day, 
these  resemblances '  [to  the  mature  dog]  '  are  so  numerous,  or, 
in  other  words,  the  puppy  is  so  matured,  so  fully  equipped 
physically,  that  much  less  interest,  or,  at  all  events,  import- 
ance, attaches  to  the  study  of  his  physical  life'  (427,  p.  268,  p. 
164).  The  cat  develops  more  rapidly  than  the  dog,  and  has 
more  of  the  wild  animal  about  it,  '  the  nature  of  the  dog  being 
much  nearer  to  that  of  man  than  is  the  cat's  ' ;  the  dog  also  is 
'essentially  a  social  and  a  gregarious  animal,  the  cat  an  in- 
dependent and  solitary  creature,  traits  which  are  early  shown.' 
The  dog  also  is  'docile  in  the  highest  degree;  the  cat  to  a 
slight  degree  as  compared  with  her  intelligence'  (427,  p.  232). 
The  dog,  evidently,  approximates  to  the  child  in  his  slower 
development,  his  sociality  and  his  docility;  and  these  are  the 
factors  which  have  given  man  his  superiority. 

Effect  of  Prolongation  of  Infancy. — The  effect  of  the  pro- 
longation of  infancy  in  the  individual  was  to  ensure  the  sociality 
of  the  race.  In  Mr  Fiske's  words  :  '  The  prolonged  helpless- 
ness of  the  offspring  must  keep  the  parents  together  for  longer 
and  longer  periods  in  successive  epochs  ;  and  when  at  last  the 
association  is  so  long  kept  up  that  the  older  children  are  grow- 
ing mature,  while  the  younger  ones  still  need  protection,  the  family 
relations  begin  to  become  permanent.  The  parents  have  lived 
so  long  in  company  that  to  seek  new  companionships  involves 


MEANING  OF   THE   HELPLESSNESS   OF   INFANCY      5 

some  disturbance  of  ingrained  habits ;  and,  meanwhile,  the  older 
sons  are  more  likely  to  continue  their  original  association  than 
to  establish  associations  with  strangers  since  they  have  common 
objects  to  achieve,  and  common  enmities,  bequeathed  and  ac- 
quired, with  neighbouring  families.  As  the  parent  dies,  the 
headship  of  the  family  thus  established  devolves  upon  the 
oldest,  or  bravest,  or  most  sagacious  male  remaining.  Thus 
the  little  group  gradually  becomes  a  clan,  the  members  of 
which  are  united  by  ties  considerably  stronger  than  those 
which  ally  them  to  members  of  adjacent  clans,  with  whom 
they  may  indeed  combine  to  resist  the  aggressions  of  yet 
further  outlying  clans  or  of  formidable  beasts,  but  towards  whom 
their  feelings  are  usually  those  of  hostile  rivalry.'  Thus,  out 
of  the  helplessness  of  the  child  has  arisen  the  helpfulness  of 
men  ;  from  a  gregarious,  man  has  become  a  social  being. 

Mr  Alexander  Sutherland,  enlarging  upon  Darwin,  has 
lately  sought  to  show,  in  his  elaborate  discussion  of  The  Origin 
and  Growth  of  the  Moral  Instinct,  how  all  morality  proceeds 
directly  or  indirectly  from  parental  sympathy,  which  has  arisen 
by  slow  degrees  out  of  pre-human  parental  care,  which  is 
closely  correlated  with  the  duration  of  growth  in  the  offspring, 
which  last  is  bound  up  with  progression  in  the  complexity  of 
the  organism.  Out  of  parental,  conjugal  and  social  sympathy 
thus  initiated  has  developed  the  whole  complex  of  our  morality. 
The  share  of  the  child  and  of  woman  in  the  development  of 
'  milder  manners,  purer  laws '  was  recognised  by  Lucretius, 
who  thus  writes  of  the  results  of  human  marriage  and  love 
after  the  discovery  of  fire  and  house-building.^ 

The  influence  of  the  child  is  recognised  in  many  of  the 
myths  and  legends  of  primitive  peoples,  as  the  present  writer 
and  Mr  W.  W.  Newell  (Journ.  Amer.  Folk-Lore,  IX.  p.  237) 
have  pointed  out.  As  Mr  Newell  well  says,  in  such  of  our 
familiar  nursery  tales  as  are  genuine,  '  the  nursery  feature  is  an 
accident,' and  they  'appealed  originally  to  the  interest  of  the 
entire  community.'  In  the  Hero-Child  myth,  so  common 
among  the  American  aborigines,  we  see  the  folk-recognition  of 
'heaven-born  mastership,'  'innate  capacity,'  'divine  birth,' in 
a  word,  an  acknowledgment  of  the  genius  of  childhood. 
These  myths  and  legends  are  the  psychical  accompaniment  of 
the  physical  fact  of  the  prolongation  of  human  infancy  and  of 
its  sociological  role  among  men. 

^  De  Kertim  Natuni,  Bk.  V. 


p  THE   CPiILD 

Rousseau,  as  Groos  notes  (253,  p.  151),  had  not  a  little 
appreciation  of  the  real  significance  of  childhood  and  youth, 
for  in  his  Emile  (Bk.  I.)  he  observes  that  '  if  man  came  into 
the  world  grown  up,  he  would  be  a  perfect  imbecile,  an  auto- 
maton, an  immovable  and  almost  insensible  statue,' and,  again, 
'we  pity  the  state  of  infancy;  we  do  not  perceive  that  the 
human  race  would  have  perished  if  man  had  not  begun  by 
being  a  child.'  It  has  survived  through  his  knowing  by  child- 
education  how  to  become  a  man.  Out  of  the  development  of 
his  own  faculties,  which  has  arisen  through  his  weakness,  has 
come  at  last  his  strength,  the  limit  of  his  genius,  the  depth  of 
his  wisdom. 

The  lengthening  of  the  period  of  intra-uterine  life  and  the 
prolongation  of  human  infancy,  the  period  of  plasticity  and 
educability,  have  been  in  reality  the  making  of  man.  Pro- 
fessor Butler  does  not  exaggerate  when  he  says  (100,  p.  10): 
'The  factor  in  history  that  has  changed  the  human  being  from 
a  gregarious  animal  to  a  man  living  in  a  monogamous  family, 
is,  if  anthropology  and  psychology  teach  us  anything,  unques- 
tionably the  child.'  In  a  sense  man  has  not  lived  for  the 
child,  but  the  child  has  lived  for  man.  By  reason  of  his 
childhood  man  is  enabled  to  advance  beyond  the  condition  of 
his  fathers.  The  existence  of  human  childhood  has  made 
possible  human  civilisation. 

The  period  during  which  the  human  child  is  suckled  by  its 
mother  varies  considerably  among  the  races  of  men.  Accord- 
ing to  Ploss  (49S,  II.  p.  379),  a  German  woman  'rarely  suckles 
her  child  a  full  year,  although  in  the  country  and  among  the 
proletariat  of  the  towns  suckling  may  last  two  years  sometimes,  or 
even  more,'  the  natural  deterioration  and  decrease  of  the  milk 
acting  as  a  determining  factor,  together  with  the  presence  and 
substitution  of  other  foods.  With  some  primitive  and  some 
civilised  peoples  the  period  of  suckling  is  much  longer. 

The  data  upon  the  subject  are,  however,  still  far  from  being 
altogether  satisfactory,  and  there  are  evidently  great  individual 
differences  in  the  same  tribe,  or  even  community.  It  would 
seem  that  the  majority  of  peoples  on  the  globe  suckle  their 
children  during  one  to  four  years,  and  the  largest  number  of 
these  from  two  to  three  years.  Among  the  causes  which  have 
led,  in  various  parts  of  the  world,  to  longer  periods  of  suckling 
Ploss  enumerates  motherly  tenderness  and  weakness  towards 
the  child,  the  pleasurable  feeling  excited  in  the  mother  by  the 


MEANING   OF   THE   HELPLESSNESS   OF   INFANCY      7 

sucking  of  her  child,  and  also  the  widespread  belief  that  so 
long  as  she  suckles  her  child  a  woman  may  remain  without 
fear  of  becoming  pregnant,  an  idea  known  in  civilised  Ger- 
many and  in  some  islands  of  the  South  Pacific,  but  utterly 
unknown  in  many  other  parts  of  the  globe.  The  length  of 
the  suckling  period  does  not  appear  to  stand  in  any  direct 
relation  with  intelligence  among  primitive  peoples.  Bessels 
tells  of  a  young  Eskimo  of  King  William's  Land,  who,  although 
fourteen  or  fifteen  years  of  age,  after  returning  from  the  hunt, 
ran  up  to  take  suck  of  his  mother,  and  Organisjanz  saw 
among  the  Armenians  of  the  Kuban  district  in  the  Caucasus 
a  boy  of  six  or  seven  years,  who,  although  not  yet  weaned, 
went  to  school.  The  prolongation  of  the  suckling  period 
among  primitive  races  would  seem,  therefore,  to  be  often 
accidental  or  incidental  (498,  II.  p.  381). 

The  Prolongation  of  the  Grooving  Period  in  Man. — The 
whole  period  of  growth  in  man,  adolescence  (if  we  interpret 
the  term  literally),  seems  to  form  a  considerably  larger  portion 
of  his  life  than  the  corresponding  epoch  in  the  existence  of 
other  mammals.  The  fact  that  'the  ratio  of  length  of  adoles- 
cence to  length  of  life  in  the  shortest  -  lived  mammals  is 
proportionately  very  much  less  than  it  is  in  longer-lived 
mammals,'  is  noted  by  Dr  W.  Ainslie  Hollis^  and  Mr  E. 
D.  Bell.  Dr  Hollis  fixes  the  completed  growth  of  man  '  by  the 
union  of  the  sternal  epiphysis  of  the  clavicle  to  its  shaft  at 
25,'  although  there  are  'great  individual  differences  in  the 
osseous  union  of  the  epiphyses,'  and  '  all  the  epiphyses  were 
observed  by  Otto  to  be  separate  in  the  skeleton  of  a  man  aged 
27  years,  who,  had  he  lived,  might  truthfully  have  posed  as  a 
youth  when  he  was  on  the  verge  of  40.'  It  is  apparent, 
therefore,  that  25  years  as  the  time  for  the  'completed 
growth'  of  man,  and  75  years  for  his  'length  of  life,'  are  only 
approximate  figures,  since  the  former  is  perhaps  too  low,  and 
the  latter  leaves  out  of  consideration  'exceptionally  long  lives.' 
]Mr  Bell,  who  accepts  the  time  of  union  of  the  epiphyses  with 
the  skeleton  as  the  '  best  measure  of  the  period  of  maturity,' 
considers  that  the  period  of  maturity  is  '  about  from  one  and  a 
half  times  to  twice  the  period  of  puberty  :  one  and  two-thirds 
and  twice  seem  common  proportions.  Man,  for  example, 
arrives  at  puberty  at  about  15,  and  is  mature  at  25;  the  lion 
and  tiger  arrive  at  puberty  at  3  years,  and  are  mature  at  6.' 
^  Naliirt^  LIX.  p.  224,  p.  4S7. 


8  THE   CHILD 

The  following  table,  compiled  from  those  of  Dr  Hollis  and 
Mr  Bell,  shows  the  progressing  lengthening  of  adolescence 
with  mammalian  longevity  : — 

COMPARATIVE  ADOLESCENCE  AND  LONGEVITY. 


Animal. 


Dormouse  .... 
Guinea-pig.  .  .  . 
Lop  Rabbit  (Buck)  . 
(Doe)  . 
Cat 

Goat 

Fox 

English  Cattle 
Large  Dogs 
English  thoroughbred 
Horses      .... 

Hog 

Hippopotamus      .     . 

Lion 

English  Horse  (Hun- 
ter)        

Arab  Horse 

Camel 

Man 

Man  (Englishman)  . 
Elephant  .... 
Elephant     .... 


Authority. 


Hollis 

Flourens  ;  Hollis 

R.  O.  Edwards 

Mivart 

Jennings 

Pegler 

Mivart 

Hollis 

Dalziel 

Hollis 

Long  ;  Hollis 
Chambers's  Ency- 
clopaedia 
Mivart 

Blaine ;  Hollis 

Hollis 

Flourens 

Buftbn 

Hollis 

Darwin 

Holder,  etc. 


Length  of 
Adolescence. 


3  months 

7  ., 
9      ., 

8  „ 

1  year 

2  years 

I  y'ar  and  3  m'nths 

1  ,,    and  6      ,, 

2  years 


4y'arsand6m'nlhs 
5  years 

5  » 

6  „ 

6  y'ars  and  3  m'nths 

8  years 

8      „ 

25    ,. 

25    .. 

30    ,. 

35    » 


Leni^th  of 
Life. 


4-5  years 

6-7  „ 

8    „ 

8 

12   ,, 

15  n 
12    ,, 

13-14- 
18  „ 
15-20,, 

30  „ 
30    „ 

30    ,, 

30-40,, 

35  ., 
40  „ 
40  „ 
90-100,, 

75  .. 
100  ,, 
120  „ 


Human  adolescence  would  appear  to  be  from  one-third  to 
one-fourth  of  life  according  to  Hollis  and  Buffon.  The 
centenarian's  term  of  life  makes  it  but  one-fourth,  as  compared 
with  the  one-fiftii  of  the  Arab  horse,  the  two-fifteenths  of  the 
thoroughbred  horse,  the  one-ninth  of  English  cattle,  the 
one-eighth  of  the  lop  rabbit,  the  one-twelfth  of  the  guinea-pig, 
and  the  one-sixteenth  of  the  mouse.  If  the  expectation  of 
life  at  25  years  of  age  be  considered,  some  40  years  remain  to 
man  after  such  maturity,  adolescence  and  length  of  life  being 
in  the  proportion  of  i.2-|.  In  many  respects  this  lengthening 
of  the  period  of  growth  or  adolescence  in  man  is  one  of  the 
most   remarkable  phenomena   of  his    existence — intrauterine 


MEANING   OF   THE    HELPLESSNESS   OF   INFANCY      9 

life,  infancy,  childhood,  youth,  seem  all  to  have  increased  in 
duration,  for  the  shaping  of  the  human  being,  and  the  compli- 
cated environment  accompanying  modern  civilisation  tends  to 
lengthen  more  and  more  the  period  of  immaturity.  In  a  sense, 
then,  the  child  is  really  the  '  father  of  the  man,'  for  the  modern 
man  is  becoming  more  and  more  of  a  child,  or  rather  the 
modern  child  is  losing  less  of  childhood  in  the  process  of 
becoming  a  man.  Emphasis  has  been  laid  upon  this  prolong- 
ation of  adolescence  by  Dr  G.  Stanley  Hall  as  one  of  the  most 
notable  features  of  modern  human  society.  Professor  N.  M. 
Butler  (100,  p.  10)  points  out  that  'while  the  physiological 
period  of  adolescence  is  only  14  or  15  years,  the  educational 
period  is  nearly  twice  as  long  ;  indeed  the  period  in  which 
social  heredity  finds  him  still  plastic  has  come  to  be  about  30 
years.'  In  fixing  the  age  for  Congressman  at  25,  and  for 
Senator  at  30,  the  framers  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  unconsciously  safeguarded  popular  education  for  the 
future  at  least.  The  ages  to  come  must  interpret  the  saying 
of  Schleiermacher  :  '  Being  a  child  must  not  hinder  becoming 
a  man  ;  becoming  a  man  must  not  hinder  being  a  child.' ^ 

^  See  for  a  comprehensive   study  of  human   adolescence,   G.   Stanley 
Hall's  Adolescence :  Its  Psychology,  etc.,  2  vols.,  N.Y.,  1904. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  MEANING  OF  YOUTH  AND  PLAY 

Play  Theory  of  Schiller. — Schiller,  in  his  Letters  on  the  ^Esthetic 
Education  of  Mankind.,  published  in  1794,  made  the  following 
statement  (252,  p.  2):  'Nature  has  indeed  granted  even  to 
the  creature  devoid  of  reason  more  than  the  mere  necessities 
of  existence,  and  into  the  darkness  of  animal  life  has  allowed  a 
gleam  of  freedom  to  penetrate  here  and  there.  When  hunger 
no  longer  torments  the  lion,  and  no  beast  of  prey  appears  for 
him  to  fight,  then  his  unemployed  powers  find  another  outlet. 
He  fills  the  wilderness  with  his  wild  roars,  and  his  exuberant 
strength  spends  itself  in  aimless  activity.  In  the  mere  joy  of 
existence  insects  swarm  in  the  sunshine,  and  it  is  certainly  not 
always  the  cry  of  want  that  we  hear  in  the  melodious  rhythm 
of  bird  songs.  There  is  evidently  freedom  in  these  manifesta- 
tions, but  not  freedom  from  all  necessity,  only  from  a  definite 
external  necessity.  The  animal  works  when  some  want  is  the 
motive  for  his  activity,  and  plays  when  a  superabundance  of 
energy  forms  this  motive — when  overflowing  life  urges  him  to 
action.'  This  anticipates,  if,  indeed,  it  is  not  the  source  of, 
the  theory  of  Herbert  Spencer,  that  superfluous  energy  is  the 
cause  of  i)lay  (252,  p.  4).  Spencer,  in  his  Principles  of 
Psychology,^  informs  us  he  had  '  met  with  a  quotation  from  a 
German  author  to  the  effect  that  the  aesthetic  sentiments 
originate  from  the  play-impulse ' — a  view  which  the  great 
English  philosopher  made  very  popular.  Commenting  upon 
the  fact  that  Schiller  was  the  author  in  question,  Dr  (iroos 
remarks  (252,  j).  3):  'The  doctrine  of  the  origination  of  the 
rcsthetic  feelings  from  ])lay  impulses  is  the  cardinal  point  of 
Schiller's  theory  of  the  beautiful  as  it  is  revealed  to  us  in  these 
letters  on  aesthetic  education.'  Wallaschek  (674,  p.  232) 
1  Vul.  II.  p.  621. 
10 


THE   MEANING  OF  YOUTH   AND   PLAY  II 

reminds  us  that,  in  Germany,  the  play-impulse  {S/^ulh-ieb) 
theory  is  looked  upon  as  an  English  idea,  while  English  writers 
trace  it  to  Germany,  and  to  Schiller  in  particular,  the  truth 
being,  however,  that  the  German  poet  and  philosopher  was 
himself  indebted  in  his  esthetic  thinking  to  Pope,  Addison 
and  Henry  Home  (Lord  Kames) — the  fifth  chapter  of  Home's 
Elements  of  Criticism  containing  'approximations  to  the 
Spieltrieb  theory.'  It  is  no  more  than  natural  that  a  play- 
theory  should  ultimately  hail  from  England,  since  the  people 
of  that  country  have  preserved  so  much  of  the  naivete,  spon- 
taneity and  exuberance  of  the  activity  in  question.  One  of 
Home's  observations  {305^',  p.  189),  'Play  is  necessary  for 
man  in  order  to  refresh  himself  after  labour ;  and,  accordingly, 
man  loves  play,  even  so  much  as  to  relish  a  play  of  words,' 
must  be  read  in  relation  to  another  statement  made  by  him 
(305,  IV.  p.  3),  '  Infants  of  the  human  species,  little  superior 
to  brutes,  are,  like  brutes,  governed  by  instinct ;  they  lay  hold 
of  the  nipple  without  knowing  that  sucking  will  satisfy  their 
hunger ;  and  they  weep,  when  pained,  without  any  view  of 
relief.'  Human  thought,  in  its  infancy,  is,  like  human  move- 
ments, instinctive. 

Gutsmnths. — Many  of  the  ideas  in  Home  are  better  ex- 
pressed, though  independently  arrived  at,  in  the  remarkable 
volume  on  Play,  published  by  Gutsmuths,  '  the  father  of  play 
in  Germany,'  towards  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
Gutsmuths  recognised  the  universality  of  play  among  all  ages 
and  all  peoples,  the  infinite  number  of  games  and  the  skill 
exhibited  by  the  race  in  their  invention  and  manipulation,  the 
health-giving  quality  of  play  and  its  ultimate  origin  (though 
fatigue  and  ennui  served  it  for  occasion)  in  the  natural  impulse 
of  activity.  According  to  Gutsmuths  (259,  p.  2):  'In  play 
strictly  so  understood,  the  player  has  no  other  object  than  the 
satisfaction  of  the  free  operation  of  his  activity.'  Here  he 
draws  some  of  his  inspiration  from  vSchiller,  for  he  refers  to  Die 
Horen,  a  periodical  to  which  the  latter  contributed.  He  also 
cites  from  Wieland,  without  giving  exact  reference,  the  following 
passage  (259,  p.  5):  'Play  is  the  first  and  only  occupation 
{Bcsc/iaftif^unf:)  of  our  childhood,  and  remains  the  pleasantest 
our  whole  life  long.  To  toil  hke  a  beast  of  burden  is  the  sad 
lot  of  the  lowest,  the  most  unfortunate  and  the  most  numerous 
class  of  mortals,  but  this  is  contrary  to  the  intent  and  wish  of 
Nature.     The  finest  arts  of  the  Muses  are  plays,  and  (as  Pindar 


12  THE  CHILD 

sings)  without  the  modest  Graces  even  the  gods  begin  neither 
festival  nor  dance.  Take  away  from  Hfe  what  is  the  enforced 
service  of  iron  necessity,  and  what  is  all  that  is  left  but  play  ? 
Artists  play  with  Nature,  poets  with  their  imagination,  philoso- 
phers with  their  ideas,  the  fair  sex  with  our  hearts,  and  kings, 
alas  !  with  our  heads  ! ' 

The  role  of  ennui  in  the  stimulation  of  play,  according  to 
his  theory,  is  well  illustrated  by  Gutsmuths's  observation  that 
when  ennui  entered  the  hut  of  primitive  man,  pleasure  took 
him  by  the  hand  and,  the  dance  begun,  movement-play  solaced 
the  first  men ;  but  when  huts  had  changed  to  palaces  and 
ennui  again  appeared,  movement  being  forbidden,  pleasure 
muzzled  her  mouth  and  cards  were  resorted  to.  The  general 
necessity  for  play  is  evidenced  by  the  widespread  character  of 
plays  all  over  the  globe,  and  plays  more  than  anything  else 
reveal  national  and  racial  character,  the  touch  of  the  people  is 
upon  them,  and  '  by  their  plays  shalt  thou  know  them ' — the 
childish  negro,  the  Frenchman  always  paying  court,  the  super- 
stitious Spaniard,  the  warlike  American  Indian  all  reveal 
themselves  in  their  plays.  Gutsmuths  cites  Wieland  again  on 
this  point  (259,  p.  13):  'And  where  is  man  less  upon  his 
guard  than  when  he  plays?  Wherein  is  the  character  of  a 
nation  more  genuinely  reflected  than  in  its  ruling  amusements? 
What  Plato  says  of  the  music  of  any  people  holds  also  of  its 
plays  :  '  There  is  no  alteration  in  them  that  is  not  the  herald 
or  the  result  of  a  change  in  its  moral  or  political  condition.' 
Play  is  a  revealer  of  character,  and  is  never  seen  to  better 
advantage  than  in  childhood,  when,  as  Home  says  (305a, 
p.  215),  there  is  little  or  no  disguise,  'for  a  child,  in  all  things 
obedient  to  the  impulse  of  nature,  hides  none  of  its  emotions ; 
the  savage  and  the  clown  [/>.,  rustic]  who  have  no  guide  but 
pure  nature,  expose  their  hearts  to  view  by  giving  way  to  all  the 
natural  signs.'  In  the  playing  child  we  '  recognise  the  anxious 
care  of  nature  to  discover  men  to  each  other.' 

Gutsmuths  came  very  near  the  heart  of  the  question  when 
he  said  (259,  p.  22) :  '  Work,  serious  occupations,  and  converse 
with  adults  are  artificial  roles  of  youth,  in  which  they  gradually 
make  their  <//'/w/  on  the  grand  stage  of  life;  plays,  however, 
are  natural  roles  in  th^ir  own  youthful  Paradise.'  Nowhere 
else  are  the  young  so  little  limited  in  their  actions  and  con- 
duct by  adults — nowliere  are  they  freer,  more  natural,  more 


THE   MEANINC;   OF   YOUTH   AND   PLAY  1 3 

human  than  here.  In  play  all  the  vices  and  virtues  reveal 
themselves,  and  '  the  youth  is  smoothed  down  like  the  pebble 
in  the  brook — a  thing  which  happens  always  the  sooner  the 
better,  provided  only  the  stream  is  not  too  tainted  and  muddy.' 
Moreover,  play  gives  a  picture  of  human  life  in  the  small,  and 
is  of  great  educational  value,  for  through  it  alone  can  youth  in 
many  respects  be  moulded  to  the  later  and  manifold  activities 
of  life.  Gutsmuths  recognises  the  fact  that  dislike  for  work 
does  not  originate  in  play,  but  finds  its  cause  in  mistakes  of 
education,  and  denounces  the  custom  of  trying  to  get  work  out 
of  children  by  promising  them  play  afterwards.  For  him  plays 
are  exercises  of  body  and  of  mind,  and  in  his  comments  upon 
the  various  sorts  and  species  of  plays  he  anticipates  much  that 
is  to  be  found  in  the  writings  of  Johnson,  Gulick  and  others 
who  have  discussed  '  education  by  plays  and  games,'  especially 
the  role  of  the  particular  plays  in  the  exercise  and  development 
of  the  several  senses. 

/vw^d-/.— Coming  after  Gutsmuths,  Froebel,  the  genius  to 
whom  we  owe  the  'kindergarten,'  vitalised  the  stray  atoms  of 
the  play-philosophy  of  Plato,  Aristotle,  Quintilian,  Rabelais, 
Fenelon,  Locke,  Richter,  and  others  who  had  sought,  if  not  a 
royal,  at  least  a  pleasant,  road  to  learning,  and  created  a  system 
of  play-education  for  young  children.  Froebel  himself  believed 
that  'Play  is  the  purest,  most  spiritual  activity  of  man  at  this 
stage,  and  at  the  same  time  typical  of  human  life  as  a  whole 
of  inner  hidden  natural  life  in  men  and  all  things.  It  holds 
the  sources  of  all  that  is  good.  The  plays  of  children  are  the 
germinal  leaves  of  all  later  life '  (225,  p.  30).  Play  and  speech 
(which,  after  all,  is  a  sort  of  play),  he  thought,  made  up  the 
life  of  the  child,  playing  children  make  good  pupils,  i)lay  was 
the  school  of  sociality,  of  art,  of  religion.  For  a  mystic,  such 
as  Froebel  was,  all  things  were  possible,  but  the  practical  inter- 
ferences of  his  later  disciples  with  the  naivete  and  the  spon- 
taneity of  the  child-nature  have  marred  altogether  the  best 
ideas  the  master  had.  The  wooden  and  modelled  activity  of 
so  many  kindergartens  to-day  is  far  from  the  ideal  of  him  who 
said  '  the  unconsciousness  of  the  child  is  rest  in  God,'  for  we 
may  be  sure  he  would  have  been  the  first  himself  to  declare 
'the  play  of  the  child  is  activity  in  God.'  Peing  a  German, 
Froebel  failed  to  prevent  the  workaday  wodd  of  his  own  time 
from  casting  its  shadow  over  the  light  of  his  inspiration.     Had 


14  THE   CHILD 

he  been  born  an  Englishman,  the  '  occupations '  and  certain 
other  features  of  his  system,  which  even  to-day  his  followers 
lack,  the  courage  to  abandon,  might  have  been  conspicuous  by 
their  absence.  Froebel  created  a  'garden  '  for  the  children,  it 
is  true,  but  not  in  all  respects  was  it  superior  to  the  unofficered 
'  Paradise  '  of  Gutsmuths.  The  latter  was  more  English-minded 
so  far  as  play /^r  se  is  concerned,  and  did  not  let  the  exigencies 
of  life  carry  him  so  far  from  the  cardinal  thought  of  Schiller, 
'man  is  wholly  man  only  when  he  plays.'  One  can  hardly 
help  wishing  that  Gutsmuths  had  been  gifted  by  the  Muses,  or 
that  Froebel  had  never  heard  the  hum  of  toil  or  the  whisper- 
ings of  metaphysics. 

Colozza  on  Play  PheuGmena. — The  psychology  and  peda- 
gogy of  play  form  the  subjects  of  a  recent  volume  by  Pro- 
fessor G.  A.  Colozza,  whose  views  may  be  thus  summarised  : 
Play  is  the  superfluity  of  energy  over  and  above  the  essential 
needs  of  life, — at  once  the  equivalent  of  accumulated  energy 
and  the  means  of  its  augmentation.  In  the  little  child  the 
need  to  play  increases  in  proportion  as  it  plays ;  the  more  it 
plays,  the  more  it  wishes  to  play.  But  mere  superfluity  of 
energy  is  not  alone  sufficient  to  produce  play.  Besides  this 
superfluity  of  energy  there  must  be  also  a  more  or  less  high 
degree  of  psychic  activities.  Those  animals  play  the  most 
who  have  this  reserve  capital,  together  with  this  psychic 
activity.  Out  of  the  great  struggle  for  existence  has  come 
this  happy  faculty  of  play.  The  young  of  all  animals  play — 
their  infancy  is  a  time  of  joy  and  gladness,  the  age  of  play. 
As  we  go  up  the  scale  of  life,  the  development  of  play  from 
the  indefinite  to  the  definite,  from  the  homogeneous  to  the 
heterogeneous,  follows  the  general  law  of  physical  and  psychi- 
cal evolution — from  the  lower  animals  to  the  higher,  from  the 
higher  vertebrates  to  the  human  child,  from  the  savage  child 
to  the  civilised  child.  The  great  human  factors — imitation 
and  imagination — play  a  most  important  role  in  child-amuse- 
ment;  but  from  the  struggle  for  life  survive  also  the  love  of 
victory,  the  instinct  for  conquest,  the  need  of  fighting,  .ill  of 
which  express  themselves  in  certain  plays  and  games  :  '  the 
chess-player,'  c.g.^  'without  knowing  it,  obeys  to-day  the  in- 
stinct of  conquest  of  his  ancestors.'  In  later  childhood  a 
rather  large  role  must  be  assigned  to  deliberate  invention  and 
fiction,   and   to  what    may  euiihemistically    be    termed    '  the 


THE   MEANING   OF   YOUTH   AND   PLAY  1 5 

pleasures  of  the  imagination.'  Play  is  a  great  social  stimulus  : 
'The  lively  pleasure  which  is  felt  in  play  is  the  prime  motive 
which  unites  children.  Child-societies  are  play-societies. 
Collective  play  is  play  par  excellence.  Jn  it  every  child  is 
spectator  and  actor,  and  experiences  a  variety  of  feelings  and 
emotions — satisfaction,  pride,  triumph,  emulation,  etc.  In 
collective  life  arise  divers  varied  relations,  from  which  come 
the  correlative  feelings  which  stimulate  child  activity  to  express 
itself  according  to  this  or  that  pleasurable  emotion.'  In  play, 
too,  occurs  the  first  development  of  art,  of  the  esthetic  instinct 
in  the  child ;  and  here,  as  with  the  savage,  ornament  some- 
times precedes  utility.  There  are  many  games  in  which 
dressing,  personal  adornment  and  the  like  are  the  chief  factors. 
Then,  when  music  is  added  to  the  child's  possessions,  a  new 
series  of  plays  appears,  in  which  rhythm,  cadenced  sounds, 
singing,  dancing,  etc.,  fill  out  the  round  of  pleasurable  expres- 
sion ;  with  the  children  of  the  poor,  the  noise  made  by 
knocking  two  stones  together  serves  in  lieu  of  the  musical 
luxuries  of  the  rich.  The  surroundings  of  childhood — physical, 
psychical,  social,  historical,  artistic^exert  considerable  influ- 
ence upon  the  plays  and  games  of  the  human  young,  as  Boc- 
cardo,  Fornari  and  Perodi  have  noted.  A  peasant's  child  in 
the  Apennines  is  differently  encompassed  from  an  American 
child  in  one  of  the  New  World's  big,  bustling  cities,  with  all 
its  wonders  of  modern  skill  and  invention.  ,  Seasons,  and 
climates  too,  are  modifying  factors,  as  also  are  country  and 
city,  riches  and  poverty,  religion  and  politics,  militarism  and 
industrialism.  Puppet-shows  are  unknown  to  some  peoples, 
and  to  very  many  children,  while  many  others  are  largely  con- 
tent with  language-plays.  The  'mathematical  recreations  '  of 
the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  may  be  compared 
with  the  political  and  commercial  aspects  of  many  of  the 
parlour-games  of  the  present  day.  The  stimulative  roie  of 
child-play  is  remarkable  :  '  If  the  progress  of  the  mind  is 
determined  by  increase  of  the  products  of  experience,  child- 
play  has  an  indubitable  value.  The  experiences  of  the  child 
almost  always  take  the  form  of  play ;  in  childhood,  to  play  is 
synonymous  with  to  experiment.  Every  new  play  is  a  new 
experience,  and  this,  in  its  turn,  gives  rise  to  new  knowledge, 
new  feelings,  new  desires,  new  acts,  and  new  abilities.'  Play 
and  playthings  can  serve  as  excellent  culture-implements — the 


l6  THE  CHILD 

memory  (as  in  word-games,  repetition  games),  the  feelings  and 
affections  (as  in  many  of  the  animal-games  and  social  plays), 
the  sex  and  domestic  instincts  (dolls  and  allied  playthings),  are 
all  subject  to  influence  and  education.  In  a  word,  'the 
plays  of  childhood  are  a  microcosm  possessing  almost  all  the 
elements  of  life.  Amour  propre,  self-confidence,  courage, 
astuteness,  order,  command,  obedience,  all  are  there.'  The 
infinitude  of  child-play  is  capable  of  exciting  any  feeling  or 
emotion.  As  Mme.  Kergomard  says  :  '  Play  is  the  child's 
labour,  its  trade,  its  life,  its  initiation  into  society'  (120,  pp.  8, 
47,  65,  91,  216). 

Pedagogically  much  is  implied  by  the  facts  that  idiots  are 
not  playful,  and  that  the  wisest  of  men  is  not  wise  enough  to 
command  the  games  of  children.  The  marionettism  of 
extreme  Froebelians,  the  neglect  or  despisal  of  invention  pre- 
valent in  certain  kindergartens,  the  fetishism  of  the  'gifts,'  the 
namby-pambyism  of  not  a  few  doll-cults,  the  caricatured 
savagery  cf  toy-soldierdom,  the  baneful  luxury  of  the  elegant 
])laythings  of  many  of  the  rich,  servile  imitation  (the  refuge  of 
idle  and  careless  parents) — all  these  are  enemies  to  the  real 
educative  aspects  of  child-play,  which  has  need  of  continual 
'  becoming,'  of  motion,  life,  the  natural,  invention,  creation, 
all  the  progressive  factors  of  human  existence  and  human 
activities.  The  two  pedagogic  laws  formulated  by  Colozza,  as 
a  result  of  his  study  of  play,  are  these  :  '  {a)  the  teacher  must 
not  urge  on  too  quickly  the  appearance  of  play;  {b)  when 
children  are  tired  of  carrying  on  a  given  play,  the  teacher 
ought  not  always  to  let  them  have  absolute  rest,  but  should 
enable  them  to  carry  on  plays  of  a  different  sort.'  The  first 
necessity  for  the  proper  exercise  of  the  play-instinct  in  a  child 
is  a  maximum  of  child-activity  with  a  minimum  of  adult  inter- 
ference. In  connection  with  the  discussion  of  the  place  of 
play  in  pedagogy,  another  study  by  Colozza — '  The  Power  of 
Inhibition  ' — is  also  well  worth  reading.  The  author,  whose 
point  of  view  is  that  reflection  is  not  a  cause,  but  the  result  of 
the  power  of  inhibition  or  arrest,  physiologically  considered, 
and  that  the  human  will  is  quite  capable  of  being  educated, 
appeals  to  teachers  and  the  educators  of  modern  society  to 
make  a  greater  use  of  this  faculty,  which,  though  in  asceticism, 
with  the  exaggerated  ideas  of  privation  and  mortification  of 
body  to  save  soul,  or  soul  to  save  soul,  it  has  been  abused  in 


THE   MEANING   OF   YOUTH   AND   TLAY  17 

all  lands  and  in  all  ages,  yet  has  vast  practical  advantages  in 
repressing  and  correcting  the  wild  impulses  and  caprices  of 
childhood,  no  less  than  the  vagaries  and  inconsistencies  of  the 
individual  members  of  normal  human  societies. 

Education  by  Play. — According  to  Miss  Lombroso  :  'Play 
is  for  the  child  an  occupation  as  serious,  as  important  as  study 
and  work  are  for  the  adult ;  play  is,  in  fact,  his  means  of 
development,  and  he  needs  to  play,  just  as  the  silkworm  needs 
continually  to  eat  leaves'  {369,  p.  117).  Indeed:  'All  the 
impressions,  sensations,  scenes  that  throng  around  him,  he 
needs  to  ruminate  over,  to  turn  about  on  every  side,  to  be  their 
author  and  actor,  in  order  to  assimilate  them, — all  this  he 
accomplishes  by  means  of  play.'  Plays  are  '  the  child's  most 
original  creation,'  and  they  form  for  him  a  sort  of  gymnastic 
that  helps  to  develop  without  fatiguing  him,  in  which,  too,  he 
can  exercise  to  the  full  the  '  pleasure  of  explaining  his  own 
activity '  (so  early  prominent  in  childhood),  his  instinct  of 
imitation,  his  power  of  imagination,  and  his  life  in  the  past  of 
the  race.  The  movement  of  play,  '  which,  at  first  sight,  might 
seem  a  dissipation  of  much  activity,  really  gives  occasion  for  a 
more  frequent  respiration,  and  an  exercise  of  muscular  and 
pulmonary  activity,  by  means  of  movements  which  fatigue  him 
very  little ;  play  is  a  real  work  of  preparing  the  ground,  which 
disappears  with  adolescence  when  the  ground  (the  mind)  is 
ready,  broken,  to  receive  the  seed'  (369,  p.  171).  Since  play 
has  special  forms  which  favour  muscular  activity,  mental  alert- 
ne>s,  imitation,  imagination  and  invention,  memory,  language, 
— is,  in  fact,  a  sort  of  physical  and  psychical  necessity — Miss 
Lombroso  asks  (369,  p.  136) :  'And  why  not  try  in  the  schools 
a  method  of  teaching  by  means  of  play  (like  the  embryo-attempt 
in  the  institution  cited  by  Perez)?  It  is  certain  that  from  it 
would  result  for  the  child,  besides  a  great  physical  pleasure,  a 
real  intellectual  enjoyment ;  things  would  impress  themselves 
upon  his  rnind  with  an  altogether  different  vivacity  and  fresh- 
ness than  what  he  feels  when  he  has  to  learn  them  by  means 
of  an  arid  and  banal  nomenclature.'  But  there  is  danger  of 
too  much  adult  interference  here. 

Attempts  at  education  through  play  are  by  no  means  new 
in  the  world.  Froebel  with  his  '  kindergarten,'  Johnson  with  his 
'play-school,'  and  Tsanoff  with  his  'playground,'  have  all  had 
their  forerunners  in  the  past  among  primitive  peoples,  or  in 


1-8  THE   CHILD 

philosophers  and  reformers  of  the  earUer  ages  of  mankind. 
Vittorino  da  Feltre  (1378-1446),  the  Abbot  Melani  (1748)  and 
Jacopo  StiUini  (1669-1770)  saw  and  utiUsed,  as  did  Ferrante 
Aporte  (i  791-1858)  before  Froebel,  some  of  the  pedagogical 
resources  of  play.  And  as  Groos  points  out  (253,  p.  517), 
Boldicke,  who  found  his  inspiration  in  John  Locke  and  Pastor 
Baratier,  announced  in  his  programme  in  1732  the  '  Locke- 
Baratieran  method,  i.e.^  a  proposal,  by  the  aid  of  play,  music, 
poetry,  and  other  enjoyable  things  (in  which  can  be  presented 
the  most  important  truths),  so  to  educate  (to  the  glory  of  the 
Creator),  within  twelve  years,  ten  superior  boys,  that  in  their 
fifteenth  year  they  will  understand  German,  Latin,  French, 
Italian  and  English,  and  be  able  to  demonstrate  the  most 
important  truths  from  the  first  principles  of  world-wisdom.' 
The  riddle-plays  of  Basedow  are  also  cited.  Groos  recalls 
the  fact  that  in  1776  Schlosser  had  emphasised  the  distinction 
between  work  and  play,  which  was  the  problem  of  the  school, 
imitation  and  play  serving  as  preparation  for  earnest  work  of 
later  years  among  primitive  peoples,  where  work  and  natural 
instincts  are  not  so  dissonant  as  in  civilisation,  where,  the* 
change  is  to  earnest,  persistent  activity,  not  attractive  in  itself, 
but  a  necessity  for  survival.  But  there  is  a  good  deal  in  the 
view  expressed  by  Dr  D.  G.  Brinton  :  '  The  measure  of  value 
of  work  is  the  amount  of  play  there  is  in  it,  and  the  measure 
of  value  of  play  is  the  amount  of  work  there  is  in  it'  (78,  p.  117). 
To  deprive  instruction  of  all  the  charm  of  play  is  not  to  be 
thought  of;  for,  as  Dr  Groos  observes,  the  rapprochements 
between  play  and  work  are  such  that  the  highest  and  noblest 
form  of  work  lies  very  close  to  play  in  its  possession  of  that 
delight  in  activity,  which  is  the  chief  characteristic  of  play. 
The  great  point  here,  as  elsewhere,  is  not  to  allow,  as,  e.g., 
Froebel  and  his  successors,  especially  in  their  children's  songs, 
seem  to  have  done,  the  really  naive  to  disappear  or  become 
atrophied  beyond  possibility  of  evocation  for  its  natural  employ- 
ment (253,  p.  520).  Absolute  non-interference,  non-direction, 
non-stimulation  of  the  play  of  children  by  parents  or  teachers 
is,  according  to  Groos,  '  not  merely  injurious,  but  unnatural ' ; 
for,  as  the  history  of  animal  and  human  life  tells  us,  '  the 
parents  are  for  some  time  the  natural  playmates  of  their  off- 
spring,' and  play  with  young  children  has  a  natural  attraction 
for  almost  every  norm.al  human  being.     Parents  and  teachers, 


THE   MEANING   OF   YOUTH   AND   PLAY  I9 

therefore,  have  a  natural  right  'to  stimulate  play  in  general,  to  ad- 
vance the  useful  and  the  good,  and  to  suppress  the  injurious  and 
the  immoral  in  play.'  But  never  must  the  ?ia'ive,  the  spontaneous 
be  allowed  to  become  the  vapidly  mechanical.  The  English 
proverb,  'All  work  and  no  play,  makes  Jack  a  dull  boy,'  and 
the  saying  of  Jean  Paul  (253,  p.  521),  'I  am  afraid  of  every 
adult,  hairy  hand  and  fist,  that  paws  in  among  this  tender  pollen 
of  child-flowers,  shaking  off  here  one  colour,  there  another,  so 
as  to  produce  the  right  variegated  carnation,'  should  be  inscribed 
conspicuously  in  every  home  and  in  every  school.  That  not  a 
few  children  '  hate  work,'  has  been  made  much  of  by  certain 
writers,  some  of  whom  attribute  it  to  atavism,  the  young  human 
reproducing  the  condition  of  the  young  race.  Riccardi  (537, 
p.  161),  who  has  investigated  the  predilections  of  Italian  school- 
children for  study  and  manual  work,  finds  males  in  all  classes 
of  society  more  frequently  without  preferences,  and  less  given 
to  study  and  work  than  females,  facts  which  seem  to  be  ata- 
vistic.    Work  is  therefore  largely  enforced. 

Work  and  Civilisation. — Work  is  one  of  the  greatest  con- 
quests of  man.  Says  Ferrero :  'Man  does  not  love  work — 
work  of  muscle  or  work  of  brain.  I  am  almost  tempted  to  say 
that  the  habit  of  work  is  one  of  the  most  striking  phenomena 
of  human  psychology.'  Not  alone  the  distaste  which  savages 
and  primitive  peoples  generally  (the  author  thinks)  proves  this, 
but  also  the  very  terms  for  work  in  all  languages  :  Hebrew, 
assab  (work;  pain) ;  Greek,  T:h(iij.ai  (I  strive,  work,  suffer) ;  Latin, 
labor  (work,  pain)  ;  Italian,  iravaglio  (suffering — c.f.  French, 
travail,  work).  The  mythic  side  of  the  same  idea  is  found  in 
the  Semitic  story  of  the  origin  of  work  as  a  punishment  for 
disobedience  in  Eden — a  view  paralleled  all  over  the  world  in 
the  legends  of  other  races  who  have  sought  an  explanation  for 
the  necessity  and  the  disagreeableness  of  labour  (199,  p.  13, 
p.  24). 

Through  the  long  effort  of  ages,  as  Ferrero  remarks,  civilisa- 
tion has  inculcated  the  majority  of  men  with  a  habit  of  muscular 
labour,  but  this  brilliant  achievement  has  come  by  way  of 
slavery,  poverty,  and  the  scaffold.  Even  now,  however,  whole 
classes  of  the  community  exist  '  who  toil  not,  neither  do  they 
spin  ' — whose  every  effort  is  directed  toward  the  task  of  avoiding 
work — criminals,  prostitutes,  vagabonds — classes  that,  when 
they  do  labour,  exert  themselves  only  in  the  most  primitive, 

3 


20  THE   CHILD 

atavistic  fashion.  And  the  same  '  law  of  least  effort '  is  known 
to  the  be^^t  of  men.  Not  so  successful,  however,  has  civilisation 
been  in  its  conquest  of  the  habit  of  mental  work,  for  here  the 
law  of  least  effort  has  uncounted  paths  to  travel  and  innumer- 
able by-ways  and  nooks  to  explore,  and  the  law  of  mental 
inertia  finds  unending  novelties  of  dissipation.  And  the  civil- 
ised human  child  is  averse  to  work,  like  the  savage. 

Ferrero,  who  holds  (an  unjustifiable  generalisation  upon 
present  evidence)  that  'the  moral  quality  which  chiefly  dis- 
tinguishes the  savage  and  the  barbarian  from  the  civilised  man 
of  the  nineteenth  century  is  violence  of  character '  (primitive 
man  is  '  an  extremely  violent  animal '),  while  '  the  fundamental 
characteristics  of  the  civilised  man  of  the  nineteenth  century 
are  serenity  and  equanimity,'  thinks  that  'the  habit  of  regular 
and  methodical  work  has  destroyed  the  violent  impulsiveness 
of  man's  primitive  .character ' — work  subduing  man  by  tiring 
him,  and  furnishing  the  basis  of  all  ethics  in  the  self-control 
which  is  the  first  condition  of  all  morality.  The  uniformity 
and  the  regularity  of  work  among  civilised  nations  are  one  of  the 
greatest  triumphs  of  the  evolution  of  the  race. 

Play  in  Savagery. — Vierkandt,  contrasting  the  relative  dis- 
connectedness of  the  impulses  which  go  to  make  up  the 
ensemble  of  savagery  as  compared  with  the  systematisation  of 
mental  activity  which  marks  the  civilised  man  to-day  (although 
this  is,  in  reality,  quite  relative  also),  makes  the  generalisation 
— hazardous,  unless  well-interpreted — that  the  activity  of  the 
savage  may  be  said  to  be  play  as  against  that  organisation  of 
culture  exhibited  by  the  highest  races  in  historical  times.  It 
is  evident,  however,  that  Vierkandt  underestimates  the  '  organi- 
sation'  (as  opposed  to  'play')  which  really  exists  among 
savage  and  barbarous  peoples,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  over- 
estimates the  '  organised  '  nature  of  modern  civilisation. 

In  connection  with  Vierkandt's  views,  we  ought  to  take 
cognisance  of  the  opinions  of  such  eminent  students  of  the 
plays  and  pastimes  of  primitive  peoples  as  Culin,  who,  in  his 
address  as  President  of  the  American  Folk-Lore  Society,  at 
Baltimore,  1897,  said  (134,  p.  245) :  'Our  ideas  of  a  game  are 
primarily  associated  with  mirth,  amusement,  play,  such  indeed 
being  the  original  meaning  of  our  English  word.  A  careful 
examination  of  games,  however,  reveals  the  fact  that  they 
originated,  not  as  pastimes,  but  as  serious  divinatory  contests. 


THE   MEANING   OF   YOUTH   AND   TLAY  21 

This  is  especially  true  of  the  games  of  those  we  call  primitive 
people,  or  savages.  We  quickly  find  that  a  distinction  may 
be  drawn  between  these  sacred  and  divinatory  games  and  the 
mimetic  plays  of  children.  .  .  .  Children  play  at  real  games 
as  they  play  at  every  other  serious  business  of  life.  They  thus 
peipetuate  games  that  have  otherwise  disappeared.  Hence  the 
value  of  children's  games  in  our  study.  At  the  same  time,  this 
observation  applies  chiefly  to  the  higher  cultures.  In  savagery 
we  deal  with  the  games  of  adults — first  of  men,  then  women 
— with  games  so  complex  that  no  child-mind  could  grasp  their 
principles  or  objects ;  with  games  so  wrought  and  interwoven 
with  primitive  concepts  of  nature  and  the  universe,  that  no 
modern  mind  could  create  or  invent  them.' 

The  relation  of  play  and  work  to  the  various  arts  and 
activities  of  human  social  life  offers  a  wide  field  for  investigation. 
Some  have  held  that  the  fine  arts  are  merely  refined  labour, 
others  that  they  are  labour  genialised  by  play.  But  even  with 
primitive  peoples  it  may  often  be  that  play  is  older  than  work, 
art  than  use  (253,  p.  56). 

From  body  movements,  according  to  Karl  Biicher  in  his 
interesting  study  of  JVor^  mid  Rhythm  (S7),  sprang  art — dance, 
music,  poetry.  The  drama,  the  epic  poem  and  the  lyric  are 
all  developments  from  the  '  primitive  labour  song,'  which  grew 
out  of  work  done  in  time  or  in  concert,  the  earliest  rhythms 
being  labour-rhythms.  The  poet  then  was  a  '  maker  '  in  more 
senses  than  the  Greek,  who  called  the  bard  To/r'/jr,  ever  dreamed 
of,  for  he  was  a  'worker' — labor primum  fecit poetam ;  and  he 
w'as  born  while  music  and  the  dance  were  still  one.  The 
children's  song-game  of  to-day,  '  Here  I  brew,  here  I  bake,' 
carries  us  back  to  the  childhood  of  the  race,  when,  as  Payot 
says  of  man's  willing,  his  working  was  done  with  the  co-opera- 
tion of  all  his  faculties  ;  hands,  body,  voice,  all  bore  their  share 
in  the  task. 

Chihirefi's  Gaines. — The  collection  of  plays  and  games  of 
children  published  by  Mr  W.  W.  Newell  (456)  and  Mrs  Gomme 
(246)  contains  innumerable  examples  of  the  child's  reflection 
of  the  labours  and  duties  of  the  past.  These  '  survivals  '  and 
'  parallelisms '  find  recognition  also  in  Groos,  who,  however, 
hardly  enters  upon  the  rich  mine  of  primitive  plays  and  games 
contained  in  the  publications  of  the  anthropologists  of  America. 

We  must  not,  however,  forget  the  great  ro/e  of  contemporary 


22  THE   CHILD 

imitation  by  children  of  the  deeds  and  actions  of  their  elders, 
which  is  very  strong  indeed  among  some  primitive  peoples,  as 
it  is  in  our  day.  The  following  items  from  Rev.  J.  Owen 
Dorsey's  excellent  account  of  '  The  Games  of  Teton  Dakota 
Children' (172,  p.  329)  serve  to  indicate  that  the  weird  and  sacred 
things  of  aboriginal  life  and  thought  are  not  beyond  the  touch 
of  the  children. 

'  Playing  with  small  things  ' — Shkatapi  chik\ila — is  the 
name  of  a  Teton  Dakota  children's  game,  which  none  but  girls 
can  play.  'They  imitate  the  actions  of  women,  such  as 
carrying  dolls,  women's  work- bags,  small  tents,  small  tent-poles, 
wooden  horses,  etc.,  on  their  backs ;  they  pitch  tents,  cook, 
nurse  children,  invite  one  another  to  feasts,'  etc. 

Another  game  played  in  the  spring  is  called  '  They  make  one 
another  carry  packs  ' —  JFak'in'  kichiddydpi — in  which  '  some 
boys  or  girls  pretend  to  be  horses,  and  carry  packs.'  Dr  Dorsey 
informs  us  further:  'The  children  of  each  sex  imitate  their 
elders.  When  they  pretend  to  dance  the  sun-dance,  the  boys 
cut  holes  in  their  shirts  instead  of  their  flesh,  and  through 
these  holes  are  inserted  the  thongs  which  fasten  them  to  the 
mock  sun-pole.' 

These  Indian  boys  and  girls  also  play  a  '  Ghost  game,' 
described  as  follows  : — 

'  One  erects  a  lodge  at  a  distance  from  the  village,  and  at 
night  he  comes  hooting  like  an  owl,  and  scratching  on  the  ex- 
terior of  the  tent  where  other  children  are  seated.  Sometimes 
the  ghost  whistles  just  as  they  imagine  that  ghosts  do.  Some 
ghosts  whiten  their  faces  and  paint  their  bodies  at  random. 
Others  put  red  paint  around  their  eyes.  All  this  is  at  night 
when  their  mothers  are  absent.  Occasionally  the  children 
leave  the  village  in  order  to  play  this  game,  going  in  a  crowd 
to  the  designated  place.  Some  ghosts  whiten  their  bodies 
all  over,  painting  themselves  black  between  the  ribs.  When 
they  do  not  whiten  the  whole  face  they  cover  the  head  with 
white  paper,  in  which  they  punch  eye-holes,  around  which 
they  make  black  rings.  The  one  acting  the  ghost  tickles 
anyone  whom  he  catches  until  the  latter  laughs  very 
heartily.' 

Thus  early  do  children  learn  that  from  the  sublime  to  the 
ridiculous  is  but  a  step. 

Even  the  priests  and  shamans  are  imitated  by  the  children 


THE   MEANING   OF   YOUTH   AND   PLAY  23 

in  the  'Mystery  game' — IVakan'  shkdtapi — imitation  of  the 
wakan  men  and  women  : — 

'  A  small  lodge  is  set  up  at  a  distance  from  the  village,  and 
in  it  is  made  a  mystery  feast,  after  which  the  ivakan  persons 
sing  and  give  medicine  to  a  sick  person,  some  pretend  to  be 
gods  {tawdshicMpi),  others  claim  to  hear  mysterious  spirits 
which  aid  them  in  various  ways.  Some  pretend  to  conjure 
with  cacti.  Others  give  love  medicines  to  boys  who  wish  to 
gain  the  love  of  girls,  or  to  girls  who  wish  to  administer  them 
to  boys.' 

Dr  J.  W.  Fewkes  and  Lieut.  J.  G.  Owens,  in  their  account 
of  the  Ld-Id'-kon-ta,  a  woman's  dance  of  the  Tusayan 
Indians,  say  ^ :  '  Each  contestant  in  the  race,  as  she  entered  the 
kib-va,  passed  to  the  altar,  with  the  fireplace  on  her  left,  and 
then  to  Ktmts''kd-2va,  touching  the  crook  which  he  held  aloft. 
After  all  the  runners  had  done  the  same,  mothers  brought 
their  children,  and  made  them  follow  the  example  of  the 
runners.' 

Of  the  '  White  deer  dance'  of  the  Hupa  Indians,  held 
every  two  years,  Mr  Woodruff  says  ^  :  'The  men  in  this  dance, 
as  in  all  the  others,  are  arranged  according  to  size  and  age. 
The  old  men  are  in  the  centre,  and  the  younger  ones  next, 
and  on  the  flanks  are  the  boys.  It  is  customary  to  have  two 
or  three  little  boys,  three  or  four  years  of  age,  in  every  kind  of 
dance,  and  the  strenuous  efforts  made  by  those  little  tots  to 
imitate  their  seniors  are  extremely  comical.' 

Ferriani  protests  against  a  low  and  dangerous  ideal  of  play 
for  children  ;  unless  it  be  a  powerful  physical  and  moral 
education,  play  is  worse  than  work  often  is  (202,  p.  270) :  'No 
toys  for  sick  children,  no  clown-gymnastics,  no  plays  that 
occupy  the  mind  of  the  child  to  even  worse  ends  than  the 
school-task,  but  plays  in  the  open  air,  plays  that  set  the  muscles 
in  motion,  plays  that  incite  emulation  and  courage,  that  act 
in  compensatory'  fashion  upon  the  nervous  system,  making 
the  child  bold,  magnanimous,  courteous  to  his  fellows,  and 
ingenious.' 

Nerve-shocking  play  and  kindred  experiences  are  bad  for 

the  child,  '  whose  whole  nature,'  to  use  the  words  of  Moreau, 

'is  extraordinarily  nervous.'     For  this  reason,  Ferriani  thinks 

that  the  effect  of  modern  theatrical  representation — the  whole 

^  Ainer.  Anthrop,,  V.  123.  ^  Amer.  Anihrop.,  V  57. 


24  THE  CHILD 

billowing  sea  of  human  passions  rushing  upon  them  at  once, 
when  robbed  of  their  rightful  sleep,  and  overwhelming  them 
with  a  flood  of  new  and  hurtful  sensations — upon  young 
children  cannot  be  other  than  bad,  and  the  old  puppet-shows, 
once  so  suited  to  little  children,  have  taken  on  a  solemn 
ultra-childhood  aspect.  Books  and  newspapers  of  certain 
classes  lie  under  a  like  ban,  and  many  sorts  of  tales  and  stories 
as  well ;  the  saying  of  Horace,  '  ridendo  diccre  verum,'  Ferriani 
remarks,  ought  never  to  be  forgotten  ;  too  mean  and  too  high, 
too  weak  and  too  strong  literature  is  alike  of  evil  influence. 
There  is  a  vast  difference  between  child-literature  and  childish 
print  or  word  of  mouth  ;  the  words  and  thoughts  of  a  '  reduced 
adult '  are  not  necessarily  those  of  a  real  child.  With  plays 
and  books  go  often  the  first  friends  and  companions  of  the 
child.  One  mistake,  that  it  is  very  easy  to  talk  to  children,  is 
about  as  commonly  entertained  as  another,  that  it  is  exceed- 
ingly easy  to  write  for  them.  The  superficiality  of  parents, 
relatives,  nurses,  etc.,  is  one  of  the  great  dangers  to  which 
childhood  is  exposed  ;  too  often  they  neither  know  the  child, 
nor  are  known  of  him. 

Principal  Russell,  in  the  admirable  introduction  which  he 
has  furnished  to  the  collection  of  observations  on  Imitation 
and  Allied  Activities,  published  by  the  State  Normal  School  at 
Worcester,  Mass.,  has  aptly  described  the  role  of  play,  which 
must  have  its  course  before  the  child  can  settle  down  to  the 
work  which  is  his  later  and  serious  occupation  (291,  p.  xxii.) : 
'  He  casts  about  for  an  opening  into  the  attractive  activities 
that  he  sees  going  on  in  the  adult  world  around  him,  and, 
reckoning  perforce  with  his  immaturity  and  impuissatice, 
straightway  adopts  as  the  only  profession  possible  to  his  small 
executive  powers,  the  drama.  The  long-past  achievements  of 
his  ancestors  reverberate  and  tingle  in  his  blood,  impelling 
him  to  action  ;  but  all  his  efforts  are  ludicrously  futile  beside 
those  of  the  giants  about  him,  and  meet  only  with  indiffer- 
ence or  jeers.  The  world  of  law  and  order  and  systematic 
endeavour  is  too  tough  for  his  assimilation.  It  must  first  be 
softened  into  myth  and  make-believe  by  the  solvent  juices  of 
fancy,  which  the  glands  of  his  little  mind  fortunately  pour  out 
in  abundance.  He  cannot  live  life;  he  must  dramatise  and 
play  it.  So  he  becomes  an  actor,  an  amateur  in  the  good 
sense, — 


THE   MEANING   OF  YOUTH   AND   FLAY  2$ 

Filling  from  time  to  time  his  humorous  stage 
With  all  the  persons,  down  to  palsied  age, 
That  Life  brings  with  her  in  her  equipage. 

Thus  in  imitation  play,  in  obedience  to  the  biologic  law  of 
recapitulation,  the  child  epitomises  and  rehearses  the  funda- 
mental experiences  of  the  race,  at  the  same  time  that  he  is 
sounding  the  depths  and  shoals  of  his  own  nascent  powers, 
and  thereby  preparing  day  by  day  to  take  part  in  the  real  work 
of  life  which  the  coming  years  will  bring.  Play  is  thus  seen  to 
be  at  once  reminiscent  and  anticipatory,  a  welding  of  the 
future  to  the  past.'  And  all  over  this  child's  season  of  appren- 
ticeship, his  Wanderjahre,  is  written,  for  the  adult  noli  me  tangere, 
let  well  enough  alone. 

Groos's  Theory  of  Play. — Professor  Karl  Groos,  of  Basel, 
who  holds  that  '  the  play  of  the  young  being  once  successfully 
solved,  the  play  of  the  adult  will  oflTer  no  special  difficulties,' 
maintains  that  'the  play  of  youth  depends  on  the  fact  that 
certain  instincts  [with  Ziegler  and  Weismann,  Dr  Groos  refers 
all  instincts  to  natural  selection],  especially  useful  in  preserv- 
ing the  species,  appear  before  the  animal  seriously  needs  them. 
They  are,  in  contrast  with  later  serious  exercise  {Ai/siibii/ig), 
a  preparation  {Voriibiing)  and  practice  {Einiibitng)  for  the 
special  instincts'  (252,  p.  xx.).  The  biological  significance  of 
play  seems  to  lie  in  the  fact  that  '  perhaps  the  very  existence 
of  youth  is  due  in  part  to  the  necessity  for  play  ;  the  animal 
does  not  play  because  he  is  young,  he  has  a  period  of  youth 
because  he  must  play.'  According  to  Groos,  '  the  psychic  ac- 
companiment of  the  most  elementary  of  all  plays,  namely, 
experimentation,  is  "joy  in  being  a  cause,'"  and  the  more 
subtle  psychic  phenomenon  connected  with  the  subject '  "  make- 
believe,"  or  "conscious  self-illusion."'  Experimentation,  'the 
commonest  of  all  kinds  of  play,'  is  to  be  looked  upon  as 
'the  principal  source  of  all  kinds  of  art.'  'From  experimenta- 
tion in  general,' says  Groos,  'three  specialised  forms  of  play 
arise,  analogous  to  the  human  arts,  and  their  differentiation 
leads  us  to  the  three  most  important  principles  of  the  latter. 
They  are  courtship,  imitation,  and  the  constructive  arts,  and 
the  three  principles  involved  are  those  of  self-exhibition,  imita- 
tion and  decoration.  These  principles  are  expressed  in  art  as 
the  personal,  the  true,  and  the  beautiful.     There  is  no  form  of 


26 


THE   CHILD 


art  in  which  they  are  not  present  together,  though  one  usually 
dominates,  while  the  others  are  subsidiary.  This  is  evident 
even  in  the  animal  world'  (252,  p.  327).  The  following  table 
exhibits  in  outline,  how,  according  to  Groos,  'all  forces  efifi- 
cacious  in  artistic  production  are  referable  to  the  central  idea 
of  play,  and,  therefore,  to  an  instinctive  foundation ' — out  of 
instinct  springs  play,  out  of  play  develops  art : — 


PLAY. 

Experimentation. 

{Joy  in  being  able.) 

{Pretence  :  Conscious  self-deception.) 


Self-Exhibition. 

Imitation. 

Decoration. 

The  Personal. 

The  True. 

The  Beautiful. 

With     /Courtship 
Animals  \   arts. 

Imitative  arts. 

Building  arts. 

'Dance  with 
excitement. 

Imitative  dance. 
Pantomime. 

Ornamentation. 
Architecture. 

With  Man-^  Music. 
Lyric 
1   poetry. 

Sculpture. 
Painting. 
Epic  poetry. 
Drama. 

The  Real  Significance  of  Play. — -This  scheme  is,  doubtless, 
imperfect,  as  critics  of  Groos's  book  have  taken  occasion 
to  point  out,  but  the  idea  which  underlies  it  all  is  a  most  sug- 
gestive and  illuminating  one,  when  rightly  understood.  In  his 
latest  work  on  the  play  of  man,  which  has  recently  appeared, 
Groos  makes  clear  this  point  (253,  p.  492),  when  he  observes : 
'  I  presuppose  everywhere  the  existence  of  innate  impulses 
{Tricl'c),  and  assimie  that  these  have  only  led  to  play-exercise 
{Spielende  Ucbung)  through  the  organisation  of  a  period  of  youth. 
Play  will,  in  general,  serve  more  to  tone  down  {abschwiicheii)  in- 
stincts already  present  than  to  strengthen  them  or  create 
entirely  new  ones.'  In  his  two  books  Groos  has  gathered 
together  a  vast  amount  of  material  in  support  of  this  theory, 
which  certainly  possesses  many  merits  not  belonging  to  others 


THE   MEANING   OF  YOUTH   AND   PLAY  2J 

in  the  field.  Youth  was  furnished  in  the  order  of  natural 
development  to  the  animal  as  a  means  of  utilising  and  con- 
trolling the  wealth  of  innate  instincts  and  impulses  in  a  new 
and  higher  fashion.  In  a  word,  animals,  and  man  especially, 
possess  youth  because  it  was  necessary  to  create  art  (and 
civilisation)  from  instincts  through  the  transforming  power  of 
play.  Childhood  is  the  period  in  which,  by  the  eminently 
supple  and  attractive  instrument  of  play,  the  natural  instincts 
and  impulses,  so  exuberant  and  so  far-reaching,  make  possible 
the  normal,  healthy,  active,  ingenious,  self-knowing  and  self- 
trusting  adult.  Youth  has  made  possible  the  passage  from  the 
unconsciousness  of  instinct  to  the  art  of  civilisation,  and  play 
survives  sufficiently  even  in  adult  life  to  prevent  this  art 
degenerating  into  a  mere  mechanism.  Just  as  helplessness 
in  infancy  is  the  guarantee  of  adult  intellect,  play  in  youth  is 
the  guarantee  of  adult  morality  and  culture.  The  prolonga- 
tion of  infancy  in  the  human  race  needed  as  a  corollary  the 
activity  of  youth  to  secure  the  wisdom  and  the  strength  of 
mature  life.  Play  may  be  termed  the  genius  side  of  instinct, 
and  youth  its  inspirer.  Man  had  to  be  young  to  be  civilised; 
had  he  no  youth  and  no  play  he  were  perpetually  a  savage. 

Play,  in  childhood,  as  Groos  has  abundantly  shown,  is 
concerned  with  everything ;  emotions,  feelings,  acts,  thoughts, 
imaginings,  speech,  all  begin  their  career  under  its  subtle, 
shaping  influence,  and  the  really  genial  among  adults  never 
lose  in  science,  art,  literature,  the  'play,'  which  makes  it  a  joy 
to  be  alive  and  to  use  life.  Language,  poetry,  art,  science,  all 
begin  in  child-play;  the  orator,  the  poet,  the  artist,  the  seeker 
after  knowledge  '  play '  as  surely  and  as  naively  as  the  child. 


ESKIMO   CHILD. 
(From  Rf^.  U.S.  Bur.  o/Educ,  1894.) 


CHAPTER    III 

THE    RESEMBLANCES    OF    THE    YOUNG 

The  Resemblances  of  the  Embryo.— In  his  Observations  on  the 
Developmental  History  of  Animals  (i8,  I.  p.  224),  the  first 
part  of  which  was  pubUshed  in  1828,  Dr  E.  von  Baer,  after 
stating  that  his  investigations  revealed  the  fact  that  'in  the 
embryo  the  general  characters  developed  first,  the  less  general 
later,  the  special  last  of  all,'  goes  on  to  say  that '  the  embryo 
of  a  higher  animal  form  is  never  really  like  any  other  [adult] 
animal  form,  but  resembles  its  embryo  only.'  He  regarded 
it  as  '  not  yet  proved  that  every  embryo  of  a  higher  animal 
form  must  gradually  pass  through  the  lower  animal  forms' 
(p.  220).  The  more  diverse,  also,  two  animal  forms  are,  'the 
farther  back  we  have  to  go  in  the  history  of  their  development 
to  discover  a  coincidence.' 

Commenting  upon  these  views,  Professor  F.  M.  Balfour 
(25,  p.  2)  remarks  :  '  Von  Baer  was  mistaken  in  thus  absolutely 
limiting  the  generalisation,  but  his  statement  is  much  more 
nearly  true  than  a  definite  statement  of  the  exact  similarity 
of  the  embryos  of  higher  forms  to  the  adults  of  lower  ones.' 
The  embryo  of  man  is  vastly  more  like  the  embryos  of  the 
anthropoid  apes  than  like  the  adult  apes,  but  we  can  be 
certain  that  the  old  apes  have  varied  very  much  from  the 
more  human  type  of  their  embryos,  succeeding  also  in  becom- 
ing much  different  from  adult  man  at  the  same  time.  The 
nearness  of  the  young  anthropoid  to  the  young  human 
decreases  continually  with  age,  and  the  old  anthropoid  is 
entirely  lacking  in  many  of  the  human  characteristics  which 
his  frctal  life  and  early  infancy  seemed  to  promise  as  per- 
manent possessions. 

The  Young  Ape  and  the  Human  Infant.— In  his  discussion  of 
the  skulls  of  men  and  apes  in  1869,  Dr  Rudolf  Virchow 
remarked :   '  The  resemblance  of  the  young  apes  to  human 

29 


30  THE  CHILD 

cliildren  is  very  much  greater  than  that  of  the  old  apes  with 
grown  and  fully-developed  men.  The  mother  who  calls  her 
child  a  "  little  monkey,"  involuntarily  gives  evidence  of  the 
fact  that  the  human  infant  has  in  or  about  it  certain  animal 
traits.  Nowhere  does  the  analogy  manifest  itself  more  strongly 
than  just  in  the  construction  of  the  skull.  The  small  size  and 
forward  projection  of  the  facial  bones  (those  of  the  jaw 
especially),  the  more  delicate  formation  of  the  eye  and  its 
surroundings,  the  smooth  arching  of  the  roof  of  the  skull, 
the  general  form  of  the  cranium,  the  relation  of  the  individual 
skull-vertebr?e  with  one  another  bring  the  head  of  the  young 
ape  so  close  to  that  of  the  child,  that  the  resemblance  is 
startlingly  great.  But  with  every  month  and  year  of  life  the 
skull  of  even  the  most  human-like  apes  becomes  more  unlike 
that  of  man  '  (667,  p.  22).  It  is  in  the  direction  of  the  massive 
jaw  and  its  strength  of  bony  framework  that  the  energy  of 
growth  in  the  gorilla's  skull  is  expended — the  brain  of  the 
apes  growing  least  of  all.  While  the  hugest  ape  has  almost 
the  teeth  of  an  ox,  he  has  only  the  brain  of  a  child.  Evi- 
dently, therefore,  '  no  man  could  ever  arise  through  the 
continuous  development  of  the  ape.'  The  lowest  monkeys, 
e.g.,  the  ouistiti,  a  little  creature  inhabiting  the  east  of  Brazil, 
exhibit  a  greater  human  likeness  in  the  bony  structure  of  the 
head  than  do  the  anthropoid  apes.  Virchow  pointed  out  also 
that  in  the  duration  and  rapidity  of  development,  both  of  the 
whole  individual  and  of  his  several  parts,  there  exists  a  marked 
difference  between  the  apes  and  man.  The  apes  have  in 
general  a  short  life  and  a  rapid  development,  and  are  born 
in  a  condition  of  bodily  and  mental  maturity  more  resembling 
that  of  animals  lower  in  the  scale  of  nature  than  that  of  man — 
the  highest  apes  attain,  at  most,  their  full  growth  and  develop- 
ment, while  man  remains  as  yet  in  the  early  bloom  of  youth, 
and  are  sexually  mature  before  man  has  passed  out  of 
childhood.  Not  only  does  the  second  dentition  occur  far 
earlier  in  the  apes  than  in  man,  but  even  before  its 
establishment  the  full  development  of  brain  has,  as  a  rule, 
already  taken  place  in  the  former,  while  with  the  latter,  what 
may  be  termed  its  essential  development  has  hardly  yet  begun. 
Virchow  admits,  however,  with  Vogt  and  others,  that  the 
skulls  and  brains  of  microcephalic  congenital  idiots  present 
a  much  greater  resemblance  to  those  of  the  apes  than  the 
corresponding  parts  and  organs  of  intelligent,  well-developed 


THE   RESEMBLANCES   OF   THE    VOUNG  3 1 

men,  but  prefers  to  consider  these  peculiarities  (the  relatively 
greater  development  of  the  bones  of  the  face  and  the  jaw,  e.g:) 
as  arrests  of  development  affecting  one  region  of  the  body 
only  ;  the  rest  of  the  body,  generally,  is  so  thoroughly  human 
as  not  at  all  to  justify  the  term  '  ape-men  '  which  has  often 
been  applied  to  these  microcephalic  idiots.  It  is  in  the  latest 
and  most  complicated  acquisition  of  the  human  race,  the 
brain  and  the  finer  development  of  the  face  that  these 
microcephalic  idiots  are  lacking,  while  they  possess  many 
other  peculiarities  which  no  ape  has  ever  inherited  or 
acquired.  So  also  with  human  monsters  and  malformations 
whose  congenital  departures  from  the  normally  human  cause 
them  at  times  to  resemble  in  striking  fashion  in  some  limited 
organ  or  portion  of  the  body  certain  of  the  lower  animals, 
and  Geoffrey  Saint-Hilaire  was  as  justified  in  calling  the 
children  born  altogether  or  partly  limbless  phoco7nele,  as  was 
Vogt  in  styling  the  microcephalic  idiots,  '  ape-men.'  We  must 
be  careful  to  distinguish  the  evolutional  identities  and  like- 
nesses from  the  accidental  coincidences  and  resemblances. 

Hartmann,  in  his  work  on  the  Afithropoid  Apes  (289,  p. 
301),  quotes,  approvingly,  the  words  of  Vogt :  '  When  we 
consider  the  principles  of  the  modern  theory  of  evolution, 
as  it  is  applied  to  the  history  of  development,  we  are  met 
by  the  important  fact  that  in  every  respect  the  young  ape 
stands  nearer  to  the  human  child  than  the  adult  ape  does 
to  the  adult  man.  The  original  differences  between  the  young 
creatures  of  both  types  are  much  slighter  than  in  their  adult 
condition  :  this  assertion,  made  long  since,  in  my  lectures  on 
the  human  race,  has  received  a  striking  confirmation  from 
recent  autopsies  of  young  anthropoids  which  have  died  in 
the  Zoological  Gardens  of  Europe.  In  proportion  to  the 
age  of  the  specimen,  the  characteristic  differences  in  the  form 
of  the  jaw,  the  cranial  ridges,  etc.,  become  more  evident. 
Both  man  and  apes  are  developed  from  an  embryonic 
condition,  and  from  the  period  of  childhood  in  a  diverging 
or  almost  opposite  direction  into  the  final  type  of  their 
species,  yet  even  adult  apes  still  retain  in  their  whole  organisa- 
tion features  which  correspond  to  those  of  the  human  child.' 

Effects  of  Age. — Havelock  Ellis,  in  his  masterly  study  of 
Man  and  IVoma/i  (183,  p.  23),  makes  clear  the  implication 
carried  by  these  facts  :  '  The  ape  starts  in  life  with  a  consider- 
able human  endowment,   but  in  the  course  of  life   falls  far 


32  THE   CHILD 

away  from  it ;  man  starts  in  life  with  a  still  greater  portion 
of  human  or  ultra-human  endowment,  and  to  a  less  extent 
falls  from  it  in  adult  life,  approaching  more  and  more  to  the 
ape.'  In  other  words,  with  age  the  ape  loses  the  compara- 
tively human  character  of  his  infancy,  and  man,  in  like 
manner,  the  comparatively  ultra-human  character  of  his  early 
childhood.  Foetal  life  is  largely  upward  evolution,  develop- 
ment after  birth  largely  '  a  concrete  adaptation  to  the  environ- 
ment, without  regard  to  upward  zoological  movement.'  As 
Mr  Ellis  says :  '  It  seems  that  up  to  birth,  or  shortly 
afterwards,  in  the  higher  mammals,  such  as  the  apes  and 
man,  there  is  a  rapid  and  vigorous  movement  along  the  line 
of  upward  zoological  evolution,  but  that  a  time  comes  when 
this  foetal  or  infantile  development  ceases  to  be  upward,  but 
is  so  directed  as  to  answer  to  the  life-wants  of  the  particular 
species,  so  that  henceforth  and  through  life  there  is  chiefly  a 
development  of  lower  characters,  a  slow  movement  towards 
degeneration  and  senility,  although  a  movement  that  is 
absolutely  necessary  to  ensure  the  preservation  and  stability 
of  the  individual  and  the  species.'  Thus  is  the  child  the 
'  father  of  the  man,'  and  the  '  Fall,'  if  there  be  one  for  the 
race,  is  in  the  descent  from  the  high  promise  of  childhood  to 
the  comparative  barrenness  of  senility. 

The  present  writer  has  heard  Professor  E.  H.  Russell,  of  the 
State  Normal  School  at  Worcester,  Mass.,  interpret  in  the 
light  of  Havelock  Ellis's  statements  the  lines  in  Wordsworth's 
great  ode  : — 

'  Shades  of  the  prison-house  begin  to  close 
Upon  the  growing  boy,' 

and  it  is  in  this  sense  that  we  may  interpret  many  of  the  poets 
and  philosophers  who  have  sung  and  written  of  '  the  golden 
age  of  childhood,'  'the  heaven  of  infancy,'  from  the  forgotten 
bards  of  antiquity  down  to  Swinburne,  who  never  tires  of 
hymning  'the  immortal  Godhead  incarnate  in  the  mortal  and 
transitory  presence  of  infancy.' 

Sotne  Resemblances  in  A^:;e. — A  possible  use  for  the  retention 
of  some  of  the  characteristic  resemblances  of  all  the  races  in 
their  childhood,  may  occur  in  the  so-called  'Resemblances 
between  Husband  and  ^Vife,'  lately  studied  by  M.  Fol.  It  is 
a  matter  of  ancient  remark  that  old  married  couples  seem  to 
look  like  each  other,  and  the  commonly-received  explanation 


THE   RESEMBLANCES   OF   THE  YOUNG 


33 


of  the  phenomenon  is  that  constant  companionship,  common 
interests,  common  acts,  uniformity  of  Ufe  and  the  hke  have 
produced  the  result  in  question.  According  to  M.  Hermann 
Fol,  however,  the  case  is  quite  different,  and  the  resemblances 
of  aged  married  couples  spring  neither  from  this  source,  nor 
from  the  supposed  general  tendency  of  old  people  to  look 
alike,  a  factor  which  the  more  primitive  milieu  of  the  aged 
and  their  more  primitive  habits  among  civilised  races  accen- 
tuate, perhaps,  since  with  savage  and  barbarous  peoples  these 
same  resemblances  are  said  to  be  very  marked.  Both  the 
tendency  of  the  old  to  look  alike  and  the  power  of  conjugal 
life  to  profoundly  modify,  if  not  altogether  to  abolish,  initial 
differences,  seem  to  have  been  assigned  an  exaggerated  role. 
Fol  examined  the  photographs  of  251  couples  (personally 
unknown  to  him)  very  carefully  with  respect  to  resemblances 
between  husband  and  wife.  The  results  are  exhibited  in  the 
following  table : — 


Number  of  Couples. 

Per  cent,  of 
Resemblances. 

Per  cent,  of 
Non-Resemblances. 

Young,         .     .  1 98 

Old,   .       .     .53 

66.66 
71.70 

33-33 
28.30 

It  would  appear,  therefore,  that  the  resemblances  between 
husband  and  wife  in  old  age  are  not  due  to  the  assimilating 
lorces  of  conjugal  life,  but  the  result  of  resemblances  existing 
at  the  time  of  marriage ;  in  other  words,  people  are  led  to 
marry  according  to  the  law  of  conformities  and  not  according 
to  that  of  contrasts,  the  mutual  attraction  is  what  the  lovers 
have  in  common,  not  that  in  which  they  differ.  The  love- 
period  in  man  has  often  been  styled  his  'second  childhood,' 
and  there  is  something  of  truth  lurking  behind  the  wit  in 
the  phrase.  In  a  sense,  physically  and  mentally,  as  children 
all  over  the  world  resemble  each  other,  so,  at  the  great  selec- 
tive epochs  of  human  existence,  it  is  the  likenesses  that  cast 
the  die.  If  one  might,  somewhat  hazardously,  generalise, 
just  as  the  play  wherein  all  children  so  resemble  each  other 
changes  to  art  which  causes  so  many  resemblances  between  its 
devotees,  so  genius  in  like  manner  represents  the  common 
intellectual  capacity  of  children,  and  the  likenesses  among  the 


34  THE   CHILD 

so-called  classes  and  groups  of  mankind  in  their  adult  expression 
are  caused  by  the  persistence  of  the  resemblances  of  childhood 
and  not  by  the  abolition  of  antecedent  differences.  Woman, 
moreover,  is  nature's  attempt  to  preserve  the  child,  generally, 
in  the  adult,  while  genius  must  not  infrequently  represent  her 
still  rarer  effort  to  do  so  in  the  other  sex.  One  might  add 
to  the  declaration  of  the  great  Chinese  sage  that  'genius  is. 
the  preservation  of  the  pure  ideas  of  childhood,'  that  art 
is  the  preservation  of  the  play  of  childhood,  science  of  its 
curiosity,  invention  of  its  fancy,  religion  of  its  faith  — and 
geniuses,  artists,  scientists,  inventors,  the  pious,  resemble  one 
another  in  their  respective  groups  more  through  what  they  have 
retained  of  the  universality  of  childhood  than  through  the 
particularities  acquired  in  the  passage  to  manhood.  Here 
the  child  is  'father  of  the  man,'  and  the  'consciousness  of 
kind '  (to  use  Professor  Giddings's  well-known  term,  which  is 
nothing  more  than  another  turn  of  the  old  saw,  '  birds  of  a 
feather  flock  together'),  which  plays  so  large  a  role  in  later  life, 
is  but  the  effort  of  the  kinship  of  all  childhood  to  perpetuate 
itself  as  far  as  possible  everywhere,  in  adult  life.  Childhood 
possesses  the  kinship  of  heredity ;  manhood,  except  in  genius 
and  in  woman,  and  scantly  elsewhere  among  the  races,  bears 
the  marks  of  environmental  influence,  strong  enough  all  too 
often  to  create  striking  dissimilarities ;  and  intellect,  the  latest 
acquisition  of  the  race,  suffers  most.  Children,  in  fact,  are 
born,  adults  made. 

Racial  Resemblances  of  the  Human  C/'/A/.— Man,  like  other 
animals,  is  most  teachable  when  he  is  a  child,  as  appears  from 
the  fact  that  the  children  of  all  known  races  of  man  are,  up  to 
the  period  of  puberty,  perhaps,  much  more  on  a  par  as  regards 
intelligence  than  adults  of  these  various  races,  just  as  they  are, 
in  so  many  respects,  more  alike  physically. 

Professor  G.  Flamingo,  in  the  course  of  his  article  on  'The 
Conflict  of  Races,  Classes  and  Societies'  (205,  p.  408).  observes  : 
'No  white  child  was  ever  born  with  a  greater  intellectual 
development  than  that  of  a  negro  child.'  This,  Flamingo 
declares,  follows  from  Flechsig's  discovery  that  the  nervous 
fibres  of  the  brain  in  new-born  children  are  almost  entirely 
deprived  of  myelin,  and  whatever  resemblance  there  is  in  this 
respect  to  the  lower  animals  characterises  both  the  negro  and 
the  white  child.  Citing  the  statement  of  Fouillee  that  '  man 
in  a  state  of  nature  is,  like  a  child,  a  sensitive,  impulsive  being,' 


THE  RESEMBLANCES  OF  THE  YOUNG       35 

Flamingo  goes  on  to  say  :  '  And  yet  the  psychological  aptitudes 
of  the  child  born  to  civilised  parents  are  enormously  greater 
than  those  of  the  savage  child.  Exaggerating  this  fact,  Mismer 
writes  :  "The  child  of  an  uncultivated  race  is  obliged  to  learn 
everything,  while  the  child  of  the  civilised  race  has  only  to 
remember."  It  is  then  absurd  to  expect  that  a  coloured  man, 
brought  into  a  civilised  society  of  whites,  should  find  himself 
completely  adapted  to  his  social  environment  and  proceed  to 
contribute  to  new  scientific  discoveries.  Not  only  the  psychical 
but  even  the  physiological  superiority  of  the  white  man  has 
been  slowly  acquired.' 

Mr  Benjamin  Kidd  (325,  p.  295)  says  with  reference  to  the 
African  race  in  the  United  States:  'The  children  of  the  large 
negro  population  in  [some  parts  of]  that  country,  are  on  just 
the  same  footing  as  children  of  the  white  population  in  the 
public  elementary  school.  Yet  the  negro  children  exhibit  no 
intellectual  inferiority;  they  make  just  the  same  progress  in 
the  subjects  taught  as  do  the  children  of  white  parents,  and 
the  deficiency  they  exhibit  later  in  life  is  of  quite  a  different 
kind.'  This  deficiency  is  largely  moral  and  social  and  comes 
after  puberty,  and  has  not  yet  been  shown  to  spring  from 
intellectual  defects — the  negro  runs  much  greater  risk  of  be- 
coming a  criminal  than  of  being  an  idiot.  Mr  G.  R.  Stetson, 
who  holds  strictly  to  '  higher '  and  '  lower '  races,  cites,  in  the 
course  of  an  article  on  *  The  Educational  Status  of  the  Negro ' 
(616,  p.  30),  the  following  opinion  of  Mr  E.  Hyde  of  the 
Hampton  Institute  :  '  During  my  trip  in  the  South  I  was 
struck  by  the  number  of  bright  coloured  boys  and  girls  who 
were  graduating  from  the  grammar  and  high  schools  at  15 
or  16  years  of  age.  The  question  was  asked,  "What  is  there 
for  them  to  do?  "and  the  reply  was  made  that  there  is  but 
little  for  them  to  do  unless  they  are  taught  to  work  and  become 
ambitious  to  learn  trades.'  It  would  appear  then  that  the 
young  negro  is  quite  as  capable  as  the  while  child  of  being 
crammed  with  Latin  and  Greek  and  the  rest  of  the  manifold 
curriculum  of  the  day,  and  quite  as  likely  to  receive  'too  much 
in  the  line  of  mere  intellectual  training.' 

Primitive  Genius. — -A  youthful  learned  proletariat  could 
almost  as  readily  be  produced  among  the  blacks  as  among  the 
whites.  Dr  F.  Boas  (60,  p.  18),  referring  to  the  argument 
from  skull-capacity  to  brain-size  and  intelligence  [the  group  of 
individuals  having  capacities  from  1450  to  1650  cc.  includes 


36  THE   CHILD 

55  per  cent,  of  Europeans,  58  per  cent,  of  African  negroes 
and  58  per  cent,  of  Melanesians ;  while  50  per  cent,  of 
whites,  32  per  cent,  of  Melanesians  and  27  per  cent,  of 
negroes  have  capacities  above  1550  cc],  observes:  'We 
might,  therefore,  anticipate  a  lack  of  men  of  great  genius,  but 
should  not  anticipate  any  great  lack  of  faculty  among  the  great 
mass  of  negroes  living  among  whites  and  enjoying  the  advan- 
tages of  the  leadership  of  the  best  men  of  that  race.'  The 
social  gap  is  more  noxious  than  the  intellectual  gap.  The 
history  of  Bornu,  in  Africa,  as  Dr  Boas  suggests,  puts  the 
negro  forward  in  his  best  light,  and  may  reasonably  be 
compared  with  the  achievements  of  negro  children  in  white 
schools.  So,  too,  with  the  American  Indian,  An  Arizona 
Congressman  is  reported  to  have  said, '  There  is  as  much  hope 
of  educating  the  Apache  as  there  is  of  educating  the  rattle- 
snake on  which  he  feeds.'  But  Mr  O.  B.  Super  (622,  p.  235), 
writing  in  1895,  informs  us  that  the  resident  physician  at  the 
Indian  School  at  Carlisle,  Pa.,  is  ])r  Carlos  Montezuma,  a  full- 
blooded  Apache,  who,  working  his  way  through  school,  gradu- 
ated at  the  age  of  twenty-three  from  the  Chicago  Medical 
College,  and  has  since  his  appointment  performed  the  duties 
of  his  office  in  an  eminently  satisfactory  manner.  Even  more 
remarkable  is  the  career  of  Dr  Oronhyatekha,  a  Canadian 
Mohawk,  college  graduate,  physician,  and  at  present  the  head 
of  the  great  secret  society  of  '  Foresters.'  But  with  Tecumseh, 
Red  Jacket,  Nez  Perce  Joseph,  King  Philip  and  other  great 
men,  the  Indian  race  hardly  needs  to  plead  its  possession  of 
intellect.  As  Captain  Pratt,  the  Superintendent  of  the  Carlisle 
School,  once  said,  '  The  great  difference  between  us  and  the 
Indian  is  a  difference  in  opportunities.'  Dr  Montezuma  has 
perhaps  struck  the  keynote  of  the  whole  matter  when  he  says, 
'  My  case  is  exceptional  only  in  so  far  as  I  have  received 
exceptional  treatment.'  If  the  right  opportunity  is  offered,  the 
right  appeal  made,  the  Indian  can,  and  does,  respond.  The 
number  of  Indian  physicians,  clergymen  and  athletes  already 
educated  and  active  in  North  America,  to  say  nothing  of 
politicians  and  statesmen  in  the  Republics  of  Central  and 
South  America,  seems  to  indicate  some  lines  along  which  these 
aborigines  can  readily  and  highly  develop  themselves.  So 
eminent  an  authority  as  Dr.  D.  G.  Brinton  has  said  (77,  p.  15) : 
*  The  question  has  often  been  considered  whether  the  mental 
powers  of  the  savage  are  distinctly  inferior.     This  has  been 


THE   RESEMBLANCES   OF   THE   YOUNG  37 

answered  by  taking  the  children  of  savages  when  quite  young 
and  bringing  them  up  in  civiHsed  surroundings.  The  verdict 
is  unanimous  that  they  display  as  much  aptitude  for  the 
acquisition  of  knowledge,  and  as  much  respect  for  the  precepts 
of  morality,  as  the  average  English  or  German  boy  or  girl,  but 
with  less  originality  or  "  initiative."  I  have  been  in  close 
relations  to  several  full-blood  American  Indians  who  had  been 
removed  from  an  aboriginal  environment  and  instructed  in  this 
manner,  and  I  could  not  perceive  that  they  were  either  in 
intellect  or  sympathies  inferior  to  the  usual  type  of  the  Ameri- 
can gentleman.  One  of  them  notably  had  a  refined  sense  of 
humour,  as  well  as  uncommon  acuteness  of  observation.' 

Mr  Kidd  assails  the  celebrated  Damara-dog  comparison 
of  Galton's  by  citing  the  remarkable  intellectual  progress  made 
by  children  of  the  Australian  aborigines,  who  are,  '  by  the 
common  consent  of  the  civilised  world,  placed  intellectually 
almost  at  the  bottom  of  the  list  of  the  existing  races  composing 
the  human  family  .  .  .  the  zero  from  which  ethnologists  have 
long  reckoned  our  intellectual  progress  upwards'  (325,  p.  294). 
'  It  is  somewhat  startling,  for  instance,'  says  Mr  Kidd,  '  to  read 
that  in  the  Australian  colonies  it  has  been  observed  that 
aboriginal  children  learn  quite  as  easily  and  rapidly  as  children 
of  European  parents,  and,  lately,  that  for  three  consecutive 
years  the  aboriginal  school  at  Remahyack,  in  Victoria,  stood 
highest  of  all  the  State  schools  of  the  colony  in  examination 
results,  obtaining  100  per  cent,  of  marks.'  Rev.  John  Mathew 
(415a),  whom  Mr  Kidd  cites  on  this  point,  observes  further: 
'  It  is  astonishing  how  easily  and  coriipletely  young  blacks,  not 
cut  off  from  intercourse  with  their  relatives,  but  living  and 
working  constantly  among  the  whites,  fall  into  European  modes 
of  thought.'  The  limit  of  the  native's  range  of  mental  de- 
velopment, Mr  Mathew  thinks,  '  is  soon  reached ' — lack  of 
application,  want  of  stability  and  capricious  morals  characteris- 
ing them  later  in  life,  together  with  inordinate  vanity  and  love 
of  praise.  Here,  again,  it  is  not  in  sheer  intellect  that  the 
aboriginal  child  is  deficient,  but  in  the  other  faculties  of  a 
stable  manhood.  P'rom  long  experience  with  the  Australian 
natives,  Mr  Edward  Stephens  (614a)  entertains  a  very  favourable 
opinion  of  their  capacity  for  mental  improvement;  and  ob- 
serves, in  addition  :  *  I  say  fearlessly  that  nearly  all  their  evils 
they  owed  to  the  white  man's  immorality  and  to  the  white  man's 
drink.'    Something  about  the  futile  and  ill-considered  attempts 


iSSilG 


38  THE   CHILD 

to  civilise  the  aborigines  of  Australia,  as  well  as  about  the  good 
results  of  certain  other  efforts,  may  be  read  in  Dr  Thompson's 
Moravian  Missions  (637,  pp.  415-451).  The  school  at  Ramah- 
yuck  (Remahyack)  is  a  Moravian  establishment,  which,  in  1874, 
was  ranked  by  the  Government  inspector  '  highest  on  the  list 
of  rudimentary  schools  in  the  Province  of  Victoria ' ;  and  the 
arrowroot  cultivated  by  the  natives  secured  a  prize  at  the 
Melbourne  Exhibition  and  a  prize  medal  at  Vienna.  At 
another  Moravian  school,  at  Ebenezer,  mention  is  made  of  '  a 
boy  of  eight,  who  had  been  caught  less  than  two  years  before, 
at  which  time  he  knew  not  a  word  of  English,  and  had  never 
seen  a  book,  but  now  could  read  tolerably  well,  and  had  made 
fair  progress  in  all  elementary  branches,  writing  included.' 
Of  the  natives  in  other  parts  of  the  country,  we  are  told  '  many 
have  acquired  ease  and  correctness  in  the  use  of  the  English 
language,  have  become  skilled  riders  and  superior  shepherds.' 
Of  the  adult  Australian  Mr  Stephens  takes  a  comparatively 
high  view,  describing  a  full-blooded  native  of  his  acquaintance 
as  '  an  agreeable  com.panion,  interesting  in  conversation,  full 
of  anecdote  and  adventure.' 

This  mental  capacity  of  the  children  of  aboriginal  people, 
seen  in  Australia  amid  so  many  disadvantageous  factors  of 
environment,  is  still  more  in  evidence  in  its  own  7ui/ieu.  Very 
interesting  in  this  connection  are  the  experiences  of  mission- 
aries with  their  phonetic  alphabets  for  recording  primitive 
languages  and  teaching  the  natives  to  read  and  write.  Mr  J. 
C.  Pilling  ^  tells  us  that  the  Cherokee  child  learns  to  read  and 
write  in  two  and  a  half  months,  the  average  Cree  child  learns 
to  read  fluently  in  a  few  weeks.  Precocity  in  learning  to  read 
and  write,  even  with  our  unphonetic  and  cumbersome  system 
of  English  spelling,  has  been  again  and  again  reported  in 
Indian  children. 

This  precocity  of  childhood  may  be  said  to  characterise 
all  the  known  races  of  man,  and  to  be  even  more  marked  the 
more  primitive  the  race.  On  this  point,  '  It  is  an  interesting 
fact,'  says  Havelock  Ellis  (183,  p.  177),  'and  perhaps  of  some 
significance,  that  among  primitive  races  in  all  parts  of  the 
world,  the  children,  at  an  early  ago,  are  very  precocious  in 
intelligence.'  And  again,  '  It  seems  that,  the  lower  the  race, 
the  more  marked  is  this  precocity,  and  its  arrest  at  puberty. 
It  is  a  fact  that  must  be  taken  in  connection  with  the  peculiarly 

^  Ainer.  AiUhrop.,  VI.  p.  184. 


THE  RESEMBLANCES  OF  THE  YOUNG       39 

human  character  of  the  youthful  anthropoid  apes  and  the  more 
degraded  morphological  characters  of  the  adults.'  The  same 
writer  cites  from  Lord  Wolseley  the  following  a  propos  of  the 
Fantis,  an  African  tribe:  'The  boy  is  far  brighter,  quicker, 
and  cleverer  than  the  man.  You  can  apparently  teach  the 
boy  anything  until  he  reaches  puberty;  then  he  becomes 
duller  and  more  stupid,  more  lazy  and  more  useless  every 
day';  and  Leclere  has  said  something  similar  of  the  Cam- 
bodians. But  over  against  these  statements  we  can  set  the 
corresponding  (though  less  marked)  phenomena  of  puberty  in 
our  own  races — '  the  silly  years,'  for  an  arrest  of  mental  de- 
velopment actually  seems  to  take  place  —  and  the  law  of 
retardation  which  apparently  governs  the  achievements  of  the 
human  being  outside  the  bounds  of  childhood.  The  child 
grows  fast,  learns  fast,  lives  fast,  in  a  sense,  at  least. 

Powers  of  Early  Childhood. — What  has  been  called  the 
'  law  of  rapid  activity '  is  perhaps  the  most  marked  character- 
istic of  growing  childhood  as  compared  with  adult  age.  '  This 
rapidity  of  action,'  says  Dr  Alvarez  (5,  p.  18),  'marks  the 
child,  from  the  smallest  organic  action  to  the  highest  psychic 
acts  and  voluntary  movements,'  and  even  characterises  him  in 
perturbed  as  well  as  normal  functionality,  in  health,  and  in 
disease.  In  childhood  we  see  rapidity  of  nutrition,  circula- 
tion, respiration,  digestion,  secretion,  pain,  pleasure.  Like  his 
griefs  and  his  joys,  the  child's  diseases  and  maladies  evolve 
quickly,  and  the  remedies  are  quickly  absorbed,  do  their  work, 
and  are  eliminated. 

Here,  too,  lies,  in  great  part,  the  explanation  of  the  wonder- 
ful progress  in  acquisitive  development  of  early  childhood,  and 
the  remarkable  decrease  which  characterises  the  human  in- 
dividual later  on  in  life.  This  relative  decrease  of  progress 
has  been  noted  by  various  writers,  from  Tiedemann,  the  father 
of  'child-psychology,'  in  1787,  down  to  the  present  time. 
Egger  sums  up  the  facts  in  these  words  (181,  p.  12) :  'In  the 
first  period  of  its  life,  the  child's  progress  is  marked  from  day 
to  day,  then  from  week  to  week,  then  from  month  to  month, 
then  from  year  to  year.'  To  this  statement  he  adds:  'The 
age  when  the  mind  has  as  yet  no  teacher  (properly  understood) 
is  perhaps  that  in  which  it  learns  the  most  and  the  quickest  '— 
the  number  of  new  ideas  acquired  during  this  period  (from 
birth  to  about  five  or  six  years)  as  compared  with  the  achieve- 
ments of  later  life  is  indeed  remarkable. 


40  THE   CHILD 

Genius. — In  spite  of  the  objections  of  some  psychologists, 
there  is  much  truth  in  the  saying  of  Goethe,  '  If  children  grew 
up  according  to  early  indications,  we  should  have  nothing  but 
geniuses';  and  all  the  play  of  environment  since  the  race 
began  has  not  removed  the  fact  emphasised  by  Schopenhauer, 
'Every  child  is  to  a  certain  extent  a  genius,  and  every  genius 
is  to  a  certain  extent  a  child.'  '(jenius,'  says  Mr  C.  H. 
Cooley  in  a  recent  essay  (126,  p.  317),  'is  that  aptitude  for 
greatness  that  is  born  in  a  man.  Fame  is  the  recognition  by 
men  that  greatness  has  been  achieved.  Between  the  two  lie 
early  nurture  and  training,  schools,  the  influence  of  friends  and 
books,  opportunities,  and,  in  short,  the  whole  working  of 
organised  society  upon  the  individual.  One  is  biological,  the 
other  social ;  to  produce  geniuses  is  a  function  of  race,  to 
allot  fame  is  a  function  of  history.'  Mr  Cooley  offers  much 
in  disproof  of  Galton's  assertion  that  genius  is  independent  of 
schools  and  social  conditions. 

That  the  spread  of  education  and  the  existence  of  a  demo- 
cratic spirit  and  democratic  institutions  further  the  develop- 
ment and  the  recognition  of  genius  is  a  view  that  has  much 
in  its  favour,  judged  by  the  history  of  Greece,  Italy,  the 
Netherlands,  England,  Scotland,  and  the  United  States — 
especially  in  those  epochs  when  '  the  people '  were  more  or 
less  in  evidence.  And  here  it  is  worth  remembering  that 
childhood  is  essentially  democratic,  and  it  possesses  in  its 
collective  aspect  that  very  'voice  of  the  people,'  in  its  most 
naive  and  genial  form.  Mr  Cooley  attaches  considerable 
importance  to  the  group-fashion  in  which  genius  is  wont  to 
appear,  e.g.,  in  Athens,  530-430  B.C.  (statesmen,  soldiers, 
literary  and  scientific  men,  philosophers,  poets,  etc.)  ;  in  Italy, 
fifteenth  century  (painters) ;  in  England,  1550-1650  (literary  and 
scientific  men,  poets,  philosophers,  statesmen,  soldiers);  America, 
1 783-1814  (literary  men).  Consideration  of  such  groupings 
might  well  lead  one  to  believe  that  there  is  '  something  in  the 
air '  when  geniuses  are  born,  something  akin,  perhaps,  to  the 
'  feeling '  which  is  present  at  the  production  of  the  best  things 
of  childhood — races  may  be  '  moved '  as  children  are  some- 
times. The  history  of  the  outburst  of  dramatic  genius  all  over 
western  Europe  in  the  last  half  of  the  sixteenth  and  the 
first  half  of  the  seventeenth  century  is  most  remarkable.  The 
epoch  from  1550  to  1650  is  in  fact  the  most  glorious  age  the 
world   has   ever   known.     It   saw   the  birth,   in   England,   of 


THE   RESEMBLANCES   OF   THE   YOUNG  41 

Shakespeare,  Marlowe,  Jonson,  and  many  other  dramatists  of 
high  rank ;  in  France,  of  Corneille,  Racine,  Moliere ;  in  Spain, 
of  Calderon  and  Lope  de  Vega;  in  Holland,  of  Vondel.  And 
of  other  men  of  genius  there  were  born  in  this  age,  in  England, 
Spenser,  Milton,  Dryden,  Bacon,  Locke,  Newton ;  in  France, 
Descartes ;  in  Spain,  Cervantes  and  Velasquez ;  in  Holland, 
Spinoza.  Nay,  more,  the  twenty  years,  1550-1570,  count  the 
birthdays  of  Spenser,  Marlowe,  Shakespeare,  Bacon,  Lope  de 
Vega;  and  the  twenty  years,  1620-1640,  saw  born  Dryden, 
Locke,  Moliere,  Racine,  Spinoza.  If  one  looks  at  the  epoch 
1 550-1650  and  the  age  1450-1550  which  preceded  it,  one  may 
be  led  to  believe  that  it  represented  one  of  those  resurgences 
of  the  genius  of  the  race,  in  its  most  childlike  form,  the 
dramatic  art,  and  those  other  sorts  of  youthful  energy,  in- 
vention and  curiosity. 

Like  a  child,  the  race  of  man  was  at  play  with  '  the 
new-found  isle,'  the  printing  press,  the  new  religion,  and  other 
manifestations  of  the  age.  If,  as  G.  Stanley  Hall  says,  'genius 
only  edits  the  inspiration  of  the  crowd,'  this  age  exemplifies 
the  saying  most  remarkably,  for  there  seemed  to  be  an  under- 
current of  genius  everywhere.  It  is  worth  noting,  also,  that 
the  age  was  ushered  in  by  the  birth  in  1552  of  Spenser,  who 
was  'the  pleasing  son  of  fancy,'  and  draws  to  a  close  with 
Locke,  who  sought  to  have  learning  made  pleasant  to  children. 
Taken  altogether,  this  period  offers  not  a  little  evidence  that 
not  only  is  genius  akin  to  childhood,  but  in  its  ways  and 
means  also  similar  to  the  latter.  The  precocity  of  child- 
learning  at  this  epoch,  also,  even  in  classic  studies,  is  another 
fact  which  goes  to  show  that  it  was  a  period  eminently 
suited  to  give  the  innate  genius  of  childhood  a  fair  opportunity. 
The  precocity  of  childhood  and  genius  seem  at  this  period  of 
the  race's  history  to  be  correlated,  a  correlation  favoured  by 
the  development  of  social  institutions,  new  inventions  like  the 
printing  press,  new  ventures  like  the  seafaring  of  the  fifteenth 
and  sixteenth  centuries,  new  religious  movements,  and  the  stir 
of  new  politics. 

Andrew  Lang,  in  his  very  brief  discussion  of  '  Genius  in 
Children'  (346,  p.  37),  seems  to  take  a  very  favourable 
view  of  precocity,  recognising  the  fact  that  certain  things 
(mental  inner  vision,  e.g.,  the  capacity  for  doing  things  without 
taking  pains,  very  common  in  children  as  compared  with  the 
ordinary  adult)  belong  also  to  genius.     Here  again  it  is  the 


42  THE   CHILD 

retention  of  the  genius  of  childhood  that  makes  the  adult 
genius.  Lombroso  (364,  p.  15)  also  holds  that  the  typical 
'man  of  genius'  is  precocious,  considering,  however,  this  pre- 
cocity '  morbid  and  atavistic,  being  observed  among  all  savages,' 
and  'often  among  children  of  the  insane,'  although,  on  the 
other  hand,  he  admits  that  '  many  children  who  become  great 
men  have  been  regarded  at  school  as  bad,  wild,  or  silly ;  but 
their  intelligence  appeared  as  soon  as  the  occasion  offered,  or 
when  they  found  the  true  path  of  their  genius.'  Many  in- 
stances of  both  kinds  are  given.  Emerson  may  be  taken  as 
a  fair  example  of  precocity  in  childhood,  Lowell,  perhaps,  to 
illustrate  the  opposite — both  men  of  genius,  both  New  Eng- 
landers.  There  is  evidently,  as  Lang  seems  to  hold,  genius 
that  is  of  necessity  very  precocious,  and  genius  that  may  or  may 
not  be  thus  constituted  at  the  start.  We  must  also  distinguish 
between  the  judgment  of  teachers  as  to  the  precocity  of  the 
child-genius  and  true  precocity — many  geniuses,  as  De  Can- 
dolle  has  shown  for  France  especially,  have  had  very  mediocre 
instructors ;  and  Galton,  for  English  men  of  science,  showed 
that  the  geniuses  among  them  '  were  not  made  by  much  or 
regular  teaching.' 

Precodty  of  Genius. — Sully,  iji  his  study  of  'genius  and 
precocity,'  concludes  that  'genius  is  precocious  in  the  sense 
of  manifesting  itself  early,'  and  inclines  to  the  view  that  an 
'early  manifestation  of  genius  is  not  incompatible  with  a 
prolonged,  and  even  late  development,'  agreeing  somewhat 
with  Galton's  opinion  (230,  p.  44)  that  eminent  men  surpass 
ordinary  men  not  only  in  superiority  from  the  first,  but  also 
in  a  more  prolonged  development.  There  is,  then,  as  in 
the  race  and  individual,  in  the  genius  a  prolongation  of 
infancy.  Children  are  precocious  as  children,  true  genius 
is  precocious  as  genius.  Not  every  precocious  child  is  a 
genius  when  adult,  for  clever  children  are  killed  off  or  re- 
pressed by  circumstances  of  environments,  incidents  of  de- 
velopment, defects  of  character,  neglect  of  parents  or  teachers, 
etc.,  but  the  real  genius  is  precociously  equipped  at  the  start, 
and  a  favourable  environment  establishes  and  sets  in  relief  his 
superiority.  Donaldson  (170,  p.  354)  has  compiled  from 
Sully's  data  respecting  287  distinguished  men,  a  table  [some- 
what modified  here],  which  sets  forth  clearly  the  precocity  of 
genius : — 


THE    RESEMDLANCES   OF   THE    YOUNG 


43 


Class  of  Genius. 


Musicians 


Painters  and 
Sculptors . 

Scholars .     . 
Poets  .     .     . 


Scientists     . 
Novelists 

Philosopliers 


Totals 


0  6  o' 

ui 

■^oh^; 

S 

«.2 

"^ 

0^^ 

0-^ 

Tl-S^ 

^1 

^  C  OJ 

0  0  . 

'i«J 

Om  S 

p.c. 

<  0^ 

p.c. 

p.r. 

40 

95 

100 

100 

58 

89 

98 

100 

36 

83 

71 

90 

52 

75 

92 

92 

36 

75 

So 

92 

2S 

75 

56 

So 

37 

67 

56 

60 
84 

287 

80 

So 

Notable  E.xceptions  to  Precocious 
Genius  and  Fame. 


Gluck,  Wagner,  (not  original 
till  middle  life) ;  Bach, 
Haydn  (late  in  fame). 

Ghirlandajo,  Francia  ;  Wren 
(was  distinguished  in  science, 
however,  before  30). 

Camoens,  Racine,  Goldsmith, 
Dryden,  Dante,  Cowper — 
all  late  in  fame. 

Franklin  ;  Harvey  and  Darwin 
late  in  publication. 

Defoe,  Richardson,  Sterne, 
Cervantes — late  in  pro- 
duction and  fame. 

Descartes,  Hobbes,  Locke, 
Leibnitz,  Kant  (but  dabbled 
with  other  things). 


Musical  talent  is  so  precocious  that  only  in  about  6  per  cent, 
of  cases  was  there  'reason  to  conclude  that  there  was  no 
marked  manifestation  of  ability  in  childhood ' ;  of  painters, 
sculptors  and  architects  three-fourths,  at  least,  'are  credited 
with  having  shown  a  decided  skill  before  the  age  of  fifteen ' ; 
so  also  with  three  out  of  every  four  poets,  and  nearly  the 
same  proportion  of  novelists ;  of  five-sixths  of  the  scholars, 
historians  and  critics,  three-fourths  of  the  men  of  science,  and 
two-thirds  of  the  philosophers  a  precocious  childhood  may 
safely  be  predicted.  Interesting  for  comparison  with  Sully's 
statistics  are  the  results  of  the  investigations  of  Miss  Caroline 
Miles  (426,  p.  552),  who  found  that  of  100  Wellesley  College 
women,  66  had  '  expressed  themselves  in  some  art  form 
[verse,  stories,  painting,  music,  drawing]  before  eighteen  years 
of  age.'  The  precocity  of  ordinary  childhood  is  often  very 
marked  here.     Another  contribution  to  the  argument  for  the 


44 


THE   CHILD 


precocity  of  genius  is  furnished  by  the  statistics  of  Dr  E.  G. 
Lancaster  (345),  aUhough  averages  are  not  very  satisfactory. 
The  following  table,  compiled  from  Dr  Lancaster's  data, 
shows  the  chief  facts  ; — 


No.  of 

Average  Age  at 

Additional 
Remarks. 

Department. 

Indi- 
viduals. 

which  Rare  Talent 
was  shown. 

Range 
of  Years. 

Notes. 

Actors       .     .     . 

100 

18  (first  great  suc- 

6-28 

90  per  cent. 

Few    of    real 

cess). 

famous 
before  sc. 

American 

stock. 

Novelists 

100 

31.6  (publication  of 

12-51 

4  per  cent. 

(mostly  American) 

first  novel). 

wrote 
'  accept- 
ably'   .-It 
22. 

Poets  .... 

53 

18. 1   (first  publica- 

g-50 

All     wrote 

Publication 

tion). 

earlier 
than  18. 

often  late. 

Inventors      .     . 

50 

33.8  (first  patent). 

18-55 

Patents  im- 
prove 
with  age. 

•• 

Musicians 

100 

9.92. 

9-20 

95  per  cent. 

Only   50    per 

(mostly  European) 

showed 
rare  tal- 
ent    be- 
fore 16. 

cent.  had 
musical  par- 
ents. 

Professional 

too 

24.11      (graduation 

Only  8  per 

Age  of  recog- 

men   (Ameri- 

from professional 

cent,  be- 

nised      suc- 

can,          law, 

school),       recog- 

gan pro- 

cess about  35. 

medicine  and 

nised  success  35. 

fessional 

theology)  .     . 

work  be- 
fore 2r. 

Artists    (mostly 

53 

17.2. 

6-30 

90  per  cent. 

50    per    cent. 

American)      . 

showed 
talent  by 
20. 

showed 
their  talent 
between  lo 
and  23. 

Missionaries 

50 

22.2  (departure  for 
field  of  service). 

Pioneers  (Ameri- 

SO 

17.6    (leaving      for 

10-26 

.. 

Represents 

can).     .     .     . 

west). 

spirit  of  ad- 
venture 60 
ye.ars  ago. 

Scientists      .     . 

118 

18.9  (date   of  'life 
interest '). 

10-30 

Age  in  column 
3  somewhat 
too  old. 

Lancaster's  paper  is  devoted  to  adolescence,  and  it  is  quite 
probable  that  larger  series  of  statistics  would  emphasise  more 
the  precocious  phenomena  ot  childhood.  lunotional  genius 
(actors,  poets,  artists,  etc.)  is  by  him  made  later  tlian  it  really 
is  in  its  precocious  development,  while  intellectual  genius  is 


THE  RESEMBLANCES  OF  THE  YOUNG       45 

even  more  belated.  Donaldson  (1.70,  p.  355),  who  cites  Sully's 
data,  arrives  at  the  general  conclusion  that  '  precocity  and 
genius  go  together,'  which  seems  still  the  safe  ground  to  take, 
for  the  exceptions  (outside  the  pathological  and  the  abnormal) 
gradually  disappear,  or  are  accounted  fur  by  environmental 
causes,  when  careful  examination  has  been  made  of  all  details 
of  information. 

The  N^onnality  of  Genius. — That  genius  is  a  neurosis,  a 
malady,  something  pathological  or  abnormal  per  se,  a  species 
of  degeneration  of  body  sometimes,  and  sometimes  of  mind, 
or  of  both  together,  an  old-time  guess  of  the  classic  philo- 
sophers, which  Lombroso  and  his  disciples  have  sought  to 
establish  as  a  scientific  theory,  is  a  view  that  of  late  has  been 
weakened  rather  than  strengthened  by  the  study  of  childhood. 
In  so  far  as  the  genius  is  a  child  he  is  certainly  not  degenerate, 
but  all  the  more  removed  from  it,  as  childhood  is.  Precocity, 
it  may  be  said,  is  normal  among  children,  and  genius  may 
be  held  to  be  normal  also  in  adults  ;  its  rarity  is  the  result  of 
bad  heredity  and  unfavourable  environment,  as  also  are  the 
accidents  and  incidents  of  disease  and  degeneration  which  are 
made  so  much  of  by  Lombroso  in  his  remarkable  study  of  the 
Man  of  Genius  (364,  p.  359).  Childhood  is  nature's  best  effort 
to  begin  the  individual  existence,  genius  her  best  attempt 
to  perfect  manhood.  That  while  many  are  called,  few  are 
chosen,  is  for  the  present,  and  not  for  all  time.  The  more  we 
learn  about  the  normality  of  the  phenomena  of  childhood,  the 
less  inclined  shall  we  be  to  doubt  the  normality  of  genius. 
Genius  has  suffered  not  a  little,  as  Mr  Yoder  (691,  p.  146) 
notes,  from  'the  tendency  to  contrast  mental  greatness  with 
physical  weakness,'  and  parents,  nurses  and  friends  have 
combined  to  exaggerate  the  pains  and  frailties  of  their  early 
and  even  their  later  life — some  going  so  far  as  to  set  up  ill- 
health  per  se  as  the  maker  of  great  minds.  '  Natural,  healthy 
development,'  Mr  Yoder  points  out,  is  shown  by  very  many  of 
the  great  men  of  the  present  century  (Tennyson,  Lincoln, 
Lowell,  Beecher,  etc.),  and  its  entire  consistency  with  the  best 
development  of  mind  is  becoming  more  and  more  apparent. 
Childhood  has  profited,  in  general,  much  more  by  the  im- 
proved environment  of  to-day  than  has  genius  in  special ;  the 
latter  still  waits  for  that  sanitation  and  improvement  of  society 
which  shall  make  it  lay  claim  to  all  its  own. 


46  THE   CIIH.D 

Genius  in  Ike  Individual  and  in  tJie  Race. — There  is,  too, 
some  correspondence  between  the  precocity  of  the  individual 
and  the  precocity  of  the  race.  This  appears  in  the  early 
development  of  art,  poetry,  etc.  '  The  artistic  impulse,'  says 
Sully  (621,  p.  602),  'which,  according  to  our  tables,  shows  itself 
to  be  most  precocious,  appears  also  to  be  the  one  first  mani- 
festing itself  in  a  decided  form  in  the  history  of  the  average 
individual  and  of  the  race.  The  child  and  the  race  alike 
develop  a  crude  art  before  they  take  seriously  to  inquiry. 
How  far  this  consilience  extends  to  the  relative  position  of  the 
several  classes  in  our  scheme  I  will  not  now  venture  to  say.' 
Wallaschek's  study  of  Primitive  Music ;  Haddon's  Evolution 
in  Art ;  Letourneau's  Literary  Evolution  ;  Mason's  Origins  of 
Invention,  and  other  recent  works  of  like  sort,  contain 
abundant  evidence  as  to  the  precocity  of  primitive  races  in 
the  faculties  under  discussion.  But  much  more  detailed 
investigation  is  necessary  before  dogmatism  is  justifiable. 
'  Recognition  of  the  operations  of  Nature,'  says  Professor 
Mason  (411,  p.  22),  'constitutes  the  genius  of  invention.  The 
Australian,  or  humble  people  just  like  him,  commenced  this 
wonderful  process.  Those  "  cunning  little  creatures,"  as 
Emerson  called  them,  invented  the  boomerang.  And  there  is 
not  a  patent-office  in  the  world  that  would  refuse  to  grant 
them  letters  for  the  exclusive  use  thereof  for  seventeen  years.' 
Equally  precocious  in  the  race  is  the  art  of  the  Eskimo  and  the 
people  of  the  river-drift  in  France,  the  poetry  of  the  Hottentots 
(even  Strabo  thought  the  first  human  speech  was  poetry),  and 
the  philosophy  of  the  Zuhi  Indians,  while  the  dramatic  instinct 
IS  revealed  in  all  parts  of  the  world  in  the  ritualisation  of  myths 
among  primitive  peoples,  and  precocity  of  scholarship  is 
abundantly  present  among  the  negro  tribes  of  Africa  and 
certain  American  Indians  where  polyglot  speakers  and 
historians  are  very  common.  Anaximander  and  Darwin  have 
had  their  aboriginal  predecessors,  and  the  sacred  books  of 
India  and  China  have  anticipated  more  than  one  doctrine 
of  the  present  day.  One  need  not  hold  that  the  human  race 
is  a  'sport,'  as  Dr  D.  G.  Brinton  suggests,  or  that  genius  is 
a  sport,  but  simply  that  the  earlier  races  of  man,  the  individual 
in  his  childhood,  and  the  adult  genius,  have  been  rather  under- 
rated than  not. 

Heredity   and  Environment. — Dr  Robert    Fletcher,    in  an 


THE   RESEMBLANCES   OF   THE   YOUNG  47 

interesting  discussion  of  the  question,  '  The  Poet :  is  he  born, 
not  made  ? ' — a  question  first  raised  by  one  Florus,  a  Latin 
epigrammatist,  of  whose  writings  only  a  few  fragments  sur\ive, 
one  of  whicli  Ben  Jonson  uses  in  his  play,  Every  Man  in 
His  Hii7}wur — '  They  are  not  born  every  year,  as  an  alderman. 
There  goes  more  to  the  making  of  a  good  poet  than  a  sheriff,' 
comes  to  the  conclusion  that  '  the  poet  is  born  and  made.' 
(215,  p.  135).  This  is  about  the  view  of  Ben  Jonson 
himself,  who,  in  his  celebrated  eulogy  of  'gentle  Shakespeare,' 
declares,  '  for  a  good  poet's  made  as  well  as  born.'  And  we 
may  extend  this  thought,  with  proper  qualification,  to  all  the 
manifestations  of  genius  in  the  individual,  and  in  the  race, 
in  all  ages,  and  among  all  peoples.  Genius  might  well  bear  on 
its  shield  the  motto  of  the  Austrian  Order  of  the  Iron  Crown 
— auita  et  aiuta,   '  inherited  and  increased.' 

The  foregoing  facts  and  arguments,  while  they  may  not 
justify  the  declaration  of  Kiefer  (326,  p.  58)  that  'all 
children  are  actually  intellectually  equal,'  do,  nevertheless,  go 
far  to  vindicate  such  statements  as  that  of  Baldwin  (23,  p.  38^  : 
'  It  is  perfectly  certain  that  two  in  every  three  children  are 
irretrievably  damaged  or  hindered  in  their  mental  or  moral 
development  in  the  schools ;  but  I  am  not  sure  that  they 
would  fare  better  if  they  stayed  at  home.'  To  accommodate 
the  environment  to  the  child,  and  to  let  the  school  supple- 
ment and  stimulate  the  best  efforts  of  nature,  is  the  problem 
here. 

Very  interesting  in  this  connection  are  the  experiments 
reported  by  Dr  E.  H.  Lindley  in  his  '  Study  of  Puzzles,'  a 
valuable  contribution  to  the  psychological  literature  of  plays 
and  games.  According  to  Dr  Lindley  (360,  p.  480),  the 
'  so-called  plasticity  of  childhood  '  does  not  necessarily  signify 
'  resource,  initiation,  promptness  of  adaptation  of  the  new,'  but 
rather  that  children  are,  par  excellence^  'imitative  beings,  and 
hence  can  quickly  learn  new  ways  of  doing.'  Dr  Lindley  puts 
this  view  of  the  matter  well,  when  he  says  :  '  Every  normal 
child  may  indeed  be  a  "  genius,"  but  not  of  the  inventive  and 
creative  sort.  Just  as  recent  researches  indicate  that  he  is 
less  inventive  in  language  than  was  formerly  thought,  so  in  other 
phases  of  activity,  less  and  less  is  being  credited  to  his 
initiative,  and  more  to  imitation.  This  does  not  degrade  the 
mental  status  of  children,  but  rather  dignifies  imitation  as  the 


48  THE   CHILD 

great  means  by  which  the  mind  gets  experience.  Inventiveness 
IS  a  plant  of  slow  growth.  Protected  as  he  is  from  the  bewild- 
ering complexity  of  environment,  the  child  only  slowly  gains 
the  wide  variety  of  experiences  which  favours  creative  activity, 
and  which  makes  for  the  higher  adaptability  that  is  necessary 
for  adult  life.'  The  author,  however,  magnifies  too  much, 
perhaps,  the  difference  between  '  imitative  '  and  '  inventive  ' 
or  *  creative  '  genius,  crediting  childhood  with  too  little  of  the 
latter,  and  forgetting  that  it  is  imitation  of  adults  that  really 
lowers  the  tone  and  the  power  of  child-genius. 

It  would  seem  that,  for  young  individuals,  as  for  young 
races,  the  way  is  much  the  same,  the  fundamental  factors  in 
education,  as  in  civilisation,  being,  outside  of  the  intellectual 
capacity,  opportunity,  suitable  mi/ieu,  sustained  interest.  To 
the  historical  incident,  so  powerful  in  leading  races  up  to  the 
heights  of  civilisation,  may  be  said  to  correspond  the  personal 
incident  so  influential  with  the  child.  Dr  Boas  (60,  p.  10) 
has  remarked :  '  Historical  events  appear  to  have  been  much 
more  potent  in  leading  races  to  civilisation  than  their  faculty, 
and  it  follows  that  achievements  of  races  do  not  warrant  us  to 
assume  that  one  race  is  more  highly  gifted  than  the  other.' 
Something  similar  might  be  said  for  the  children  of  all  the 
races  of  m-en.  Judged  from  a  purely  intellectual  point  of  view, 
children,  like  races,  may  not  differ  so  greatly  from  one  another 
after  all,  though  circumstances,  surroundings,  events,  uncon- 
trollable influences  and  unfavourable  environments  often  drive 
them  far  apart.  The  sporadic  occurrence  of  genius,  not  always 
explainable  by  the  laws  of  heredity,  the  sudden  bursting  forth 
of  talent  (in  advanced  years  even)  where  none  was  looked  for, 
the  constantly  increasing  appreciation  of  childhood  since  '  child- 
study'  has  revealed  its  deeper  wisdom  and  its  inexhaustible 
variety — these  and  many  other  things  seem  to  speak  for  the 
essential  genius  of  childhood  everywhere.  Nor  must  it  be  for- 
gotten that  when  we  have  the  child  in  the  presence  of  matters 
not  the  product  of  our  civilisation  so  much  as  the  outcome  of 
universally  human  needs  and  requirements,  the  beginnings  of 
the  graces  and  the  arts  of  all  humanity,  we  get  some  glimpse 
of  a  real  genius  that  belongs  to  him  as  a  child,  apart  from  that 
of  mere  intellect.  And  it  is  so,  too,  with  primitive  races. 
Anatomical,  physiological,  psychological  differences  exist  be- 
tween  races   and   between   individuals,    but   are   they  in   all 


THE   RESEMBLANCES   OF   THE   YOUNG  49 

normal  cases  of  such  a  character  that  we  are  justified  in 
declaring  that,  ab  initio,  race  A  or  individual  A  was  superior 
intellectually  to  race  B  or  individual  B  under  the  same 
favourable  environment  and  stimuli?  It  would  seem  as  if 
our  range  of  knowledge  must  be  far  wider  and  more  pro- 
found before  we  can  venture  to  take  up  the  challenge  of 
the  poet : — 

'  Who  can  declare  for  what  high  cause 
This  Darling  of  the  Gods  was  born  ? ' 


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CHAPTER    IV 

THE    PERIODS    OF    CHILDHOOD 

Theory    of   Recapitulation.  — Vxq{^%%ox    A.    Milncs    Marshall, 
in  his  address  before   the   Biological  Section  of  the    British 
Association   for   the  Advancement   of  Science,    at   Leeds    in 
1890,    on    the    'Development    of    Animals'    (407,    p.    827), 
discussing    the    implications    of    the    doctrine    of    descent, 
points    out    that    'The  study  of  Development,    in   its   turn, 
has   revealed   to   us   that   each    animal    bears    the    mark    of 
its   ancestry,    and    is    compelled    to    discover    its    parentage 
in  its  own  development;  that  the  phases  through  which  an 
animal  passes  in  its  progress  from  the  egg  to  the  adult  are  no 
accidental   freaks,    no   mere   matters,  of  developmental    con- 
venience, but  represent  more  or  less  closely,  in  more  or  less 
modified  manner,  the  successive  ancestral  stages  through  which 
the  present  condition  has  been  acquired.     Evolution  tells  us 
that  each  animal  has  had  a  pedigree  in  the  past.     Embryology 
reveals  to  us  this  ancestry,  because  every  animal  in  its  own 
development  repeats  this  history,  climbs  up  its  own  genea- 
logical tree.      Such  is  the  Recapitulation  Theory  hinted  at 
by  Agassiz,   and  suggested  more  directly  in   the  writings  of 
von   Baer,  but  first  clearly  enunciated  by  Fritz  Miiller,  and 
since  elaborated  by  many,  notably  by  Balfour  and  Haeckel' 
All  this  is  summed  up  in  the  statement  that  ontogeny  repeats 
phylogeny.  the  individual  the  race.     Professor  Marshall  notes 
that  '  recapitulation  is  not  seen  in  all  forms  of  development, 
but  only  in  sexual  development ;  or,  at  least,  only  in  develop- 
ment from  the  egg.     In  the  several  forms  of  asexual  develop- 
ment, of  which  budding  is  the  most  frequent  and  most  familiar, 
there  is  no  repetition  of  ancestral  phases ;  neither  is  there,  in 
cases  of  regeneration  of  lost  parts,  such  as  the  tentacle  of  a 
snail,  the  arm  of  a  star-fish,  or  the  tail  of  a  lizard  ;  in  such 

51  5 


52  THE   CHILD 

regeneration  it  is  not  a  larval  tentacle  or  arm  or  tail  that  is 
produced,  but  an  adult  one.'  The  study  of  the  development 
of  individual  animals  and  species  of  animals  discloses  to  us 
also  'a  series  of  ingenious,  determined,  varied,  but  more  or 
less  unsuccessful  efforts  to  escape  from  the  necessity  of  re- 
capitulating, and  to  substitute  for  the  ancestral  process  a  more 
direct  method.'  This  view  that  the  individual  more  or  less 
distinctly  repeats  at  least  the  chief  stages  in  the  development 
of  the  race,  both  mentally  and  physically,  has  been  accepted  as 
the  cardinal  doctrine  of  the  newer  theories  of  education  which 
in  the  form  of  '  child-study '  have  made  their  influence  felt  in 
America  and  in  the  Old  World. 

Some  Limitations  of  the  Theory. — It  is  possible,  however, 
to  exaggerate  both  the  role  and  the  significance  of  recapitula- 
tion in  biology,  and  Professor  L.  C.  Miall,  in  his  '  Address  to 
the  Zoological  Section'  of  the  British  Association  at  Toronto, 
in  August  1S97,  thinks  Professor  Marshall  has  done  this,  when 
he  declares  that  '  the  proof  of  the  theory  depends  chiefly  on 
its  universal  applicability  to  all  animals,  whether  high  or  low, 
in  the  zoological  scale,  and  to  all  their  parts  and  organs.' 
The  study  of  the  development  of  creatures  below  the  mammal 
has  by  no  means  given  us  an  abundance  of  light  upon  the 
subject.  According  to  Professor  Miall  (425,  p.  16): — 
'The  development  of  a  mammal,  for  instance,  brings  to  light 
what  I  take  to  be  clear  proof  of  a  piscine  stage ;  but  the  stage 
or  stages  immediately  previous  can  only  be  vaguely  described 
as  vertebrate,  and  when  we  go  back  further  still  all  resem- 
blance to  particular  adult  animals  is  lost.'  There  is  some 
truth  in  Professor  Miall's  commonplace  comparison,  when  he 
remarks  that  the  thoroughgoing  recapitulationist  'has  picked 
out  all  the  big  strawberries  and  put  them  at  the  top  of  the 
basket.'  Miall  himself,  while  he  admits  no  sort  of  necessity 
for  the  recapitulation  of  the  events  of  the  phylogeny  in  the 
development  of  the  individuals,  believes,  nevertheless,  that 
'certain  facts  in  the  development  of  animals  have  an  historical 
significance,  and  cannot  be  explained  by  mere  adaptation  to 
present  circumstances ,;  further,  that  adaptations  tend  to  be 
inherited  at  corresponding  phases,  both  in  the  ontogeny  and 
the  phylogeny.' 

Some  of  the  limitations  of  the  '  Recapitulation  '  theory  are 
also  discussed  by  Professor  J.  ISIark  Baldwin,  who  emphasises 
the  rok  of  habit  and  accommodation,  with  their  inevitable 


THE   PERIODS   OF   CHILDHOOD  53 

'short-cuts,'  and  the  lengthening  of  human  infancy  (23, 
p.   20). 

As  Professor  C.  S.  Minot  points  out  in  his  study  of 
'Heredity  and  Rejuvenation'  (428,  p.  578),  the  primitive 
form  of  the  ontogenetic  development  of  the  young  is  repre- 
sented by  the  larva  (as  in  sponges,  coelenterates,  echino- 
derms,  worms),  and  not  by  The  embryo,  whose  appearance  is 
much  later  in  the  scale  of  life.  The  great  difference  between 
the  two  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  larv?e  '  live  a  free  life  and  have 
to  nourish  themselves,' while  the  embryos  'have  no  free  life, 
and  are  fed  by  the  yolk  collected  in  the  egg.'  Embryonic 
development,  therefore,  was  dependent  upon  the  yolk,  which 
'has  arisen  very  gradually,'  and  only  after  the  great  increase 
in  size  of  the  yolk  among  the  higher  animals  could  real 
embryonic  development  be  said  to  exist — larval  development 
passing  gradually  into  embryonic  with  the  growth  in  size  of 
the  yolk.  Embryonic  development,  with  the  coming  of  the 
social  milieu,  a  'second  mother'  to  the  child,  passes  into 
prolonged  infancy,  and  the  social  protection  and  feeding  of 
the  young  child  necessarily  exert  considerable  influence  upon 
the  way  in  which,  as  he  grows  up,  he  repeats,  particularly,  the 
mental  development  of  the  race.  However  great  have  been 
the  disturbing  factors  in  the  pre-natal  existence,  wherein 
physical  and  animal  life-history  is  more  or  less  recapitulated, 
the  elements  which  enter  into  the  disturbance  of  the  post- 
natal recapitulation  are  even  greater.  The  environment,  in 
the  latter  case,  is  of  an  entirely  different  sort,  and  its  modi 
operandi  are  also  of  a  new  and  diverse  nature. 

This  prolongation  of  the  psychic  infancy  and  childhood 
of  the  individual,  so  marked  among  the  civilised  races  of  the 
present,  does  not  characterise  the  primitive  peoples  in  like 
manner.  Among  the  Athka  Aleuts,  'the  boy  is  an  inde- 
pendent hunter  at  ten  and  may  marry ' ;  the  boy  of  the 
Bismarck  Archipelago,  who  goes  out  with  his  father  very 
early,  '  knows  as  much  as  he  does  by  his  tenth  or  twelfth 
year';  in  Tahiti  the  ease  with  which  food  can  be  obtained 
allows  children  to  become  practically  free  from  parental 
control,  and  '  by  their  eighth  year  to  set  up  a  sort  of  group- 
life  by  themselves';  among  the  Khevsurs  of  the  Caucasus 
children  early  learn  to  fight,  and  '  by  their  eighth  or  tenth 
year  may  and  do  speak  their  word  in  public  '  (613,  II.  p.  216) ; 
and  many  more  examples  from  all  over  the  world  might  be 


54  THE   CHILD 

cited.  This  fact  has  been  held  to  justify,  though  it  clearly 
cannot  do  so  altogether,  the  view  of  those  who  maintain 
'that  the  play-period  [in  the  individual]  as  such  is  largely 
the  result  of  civilisation,  and  that  it  has  therefore  no  counter- 
part in  race  development,'  for  in  the  development  of  the  race 
as  a  whole  '  no  play-period,  such  as  is  characteristic  of  the 
child,  ij  found,  and  even  in  the  individual  child,  among 
primitive  people,  the  play-period  is  far  less  marked  than  in 
civilisation '  (659,  p.  386).  It  has  been  suggested  also  that 
the  '  period  of  adolescence,'  with  the  '  marked  emotional  and 
pathological  characteristics  that  so  often  accompany  it,'  is  also, 
in  part,  '  the  result  of  civilisation  '  (659,  p.  386).  The  writers 
who  take  this  view  seem  to  make  too  much  of  'the  fact  that 
imitation,  which  plays  so  important  a  part  in  the  development 
of  the  child,  could  not  act  in  the  development  of  the  peoples 
who  worked  out  their  own  advancement  independently,'  of 
the  '  use  of  a  ready-made  language  and  the  entrance  by  means 
of  it  into  an  inherited  experience,'  as  it  were,  and  of  the  fact 
to  which  Lange  (347)  and  Dr  Lukens  have  called  attention 
(380)  that  '  the  child  is  surrounded  by  culture-material  of  a 
much  higher  grade  than  that  which  he  himself  could  produce, 
and  that,  in  consequence,  the  receptive,  sensory  side  of  his 
nature  is  stimulated,  while  the  productive,  motor  side  is  a.s 
yet  undeveloped,'  whereas  in  race-development  '  productive 
activity  has  developed  hand  in  hand  with  the  sensory.'  This, 
however,  is  by  no  means  altogether  true,  and  it  is  certainly 
hazardous  to  declare  that  '  the  kind  of  play  activity  which  is 
peculiar  to  the  individual  in  his  immature  stage  has  no  place 
in  race  development'  (659,  p.  387).  Nor  is  it  any  truer  that 
'as  far  as  play  activity  has  been  found  in  the  race  it  is  of  a 
different  character,  the  result  of  exuberance  of  motor  ability 
over  and  above  what  is  necessary  for  the  support  of  life.' 
For,  just  as  individuals  are  children  and  youth  because  they 
must  play,  before  being  competent  to  use  and  control  the 
activities  of  adult  life,  so  nations  which  are  to  be  civilised 
must  be  savage  and  barbarous  in  order  to  use  rightly  the 
ways  and  means  of  culture  and  enlightenment.  There  is  in 
savagery  and  barbarism  more  of  the  play  which  is  akin  to  that 
of  childhood  than  is  commonly  believed,  and  the  parallel 
between  the  child  and  the  race  is  scarcely  any  the  worse  off 
here  than  elsewhere. 

Parallel  Growth  of  the  Individual  and  the  Race.  —  The 


THE   PERIODS   OF   CHILDHOOD  55 

theory  of  a  certain  parallelism  in  the  growth  of  the  individual 
and  in  that  of  the  race  is  by  no  means  new,  and  seems  early 
to  have  obtained  wide  currency  in  certain  educational  theories 
of  a  more  or  less  philosophical  sort.  Dr  E.  von  Sallwiirk 
credits  Rousseau  with  having  been  the  first  to  propose  the 
education  of  man  according  to  the  general  evolution  of  the 
human  race,  both  in  his  discourse  on  'The  Origin  and 
Foundations  of  Inequality  among  Men,'  and  in  his  Emile, 
where  'we  find  \\\t  genetic  principle  recognised'  (562,  p.  13). 

Lessing,  in  his  Education  of  the  Hiunan  Race,  the  gist 
of  which  is  contained  in  the  epigrammatic  statement,  '  educa- 
tion is  revelation  coming  to  the  individual  man,  and  revelation 
is  education  which  has  come,  and  is  yet  coming,  to  the  human 
race,'  spoke  also  of  the  parallelism  in  question,  in  these  words  : 
'  The  very  same  way  by  which  the  race  reaches  its  perfec- 
tion, must  every  individual  man — one  sooner,  another  later — 
have  travelled  over.' 

Herder,  the  great  German  poet  and  historic  philosopher, 
who  was  influenced  more  or  less  by  Rousseau,  compared  the 
life  of  the  race  with  the  life  of  the  individual,  for  humanity 
itself,  in  his  conception,  lived,  felt  and  moved  largely  as  did 
each  particular  man,  played  upon  and  interplayed  around  and 
about  with  the  environment  of  nature,  through  which  ran 
from  stone  to  man  one  connected  thread  of  being.  The 
Orient  represented  the  infancy  of  mankind,  Egypt  and 
Phoenicia  its  boyhood,  Greece  its  youth,  Rome  its  manhood, 
Christianity  its  old  age. 

Goethe  also  had  the  idea  of  the  parallelism  of  the  growth 
of  the  individual  and  the  race  (562,  p.  18),  as  the  following 
passage  from  his  conversations  with  Eckerman  shows : 
'  Youth  must  always  begin  from  before,  and  as  an  individual 
pass  through  the  epochs  of  world-culture.' 

Home,  the  Scottish  philosopher,  in  his  Sketches  of  the 
History  of  Man,  the  second  edition  of  which  appeared  in  1778, 
writes:  'A  progress  from  infancy  to  maturity  in  the  mind 
of  man,  similar  to  that  in  his  body,  has  often  been  men- 
tioned' (305,  HI.  p.  217),  and,  again:  'The  savage  state  is 
the  infancy  of  a  nation'  (IV.  p.  128).  Shelley,  in  his  Defence 
of  Poetry,  declares  that  'the  savage  is  to  age  what  the  child 
is  to  years,'  and  utterances  of  a  like  sort  are  found  in  not 
a  few  of  the  poets  and  philosophers  of  the  beginning  of  the 
century. 


56  THE  CHILD 

Hegel,  according  to  Professor  Luqueer  (382,  p.  112),  pre- 
ceded Comte,  to  whom  Herbert  Spencer  attributes  the  enun- 
ciation of  the  doctrine,  in  declaring  that  '  the  education  of  the 
child  must  accord  both  in  mode  and  arrangement  with  the 
education  of  mankind  as  considered  historically ;  or,  in  other 
words,  the  genesis  of  knowledge  in  the  individual  must  follow 
the  same  course  as  the  genesis  of  knowledge  in  the  race.' 
Hegel's  own  words  are :  '  The  individual  must  traverse  the 
stages  of  culture  already  traversed  by  the  universal  spirit. 
Doing  this  he  must  yet  be  aware  that  the  spirit  has  outgrown 
these  older  forms.  He  must  pass  through  them  as  over  a 
well-travelled  and  even  way.  Thus  we  see  knowledge,  which 
in  early  times  taxed  the  maturest  minds  of  men,  now  become 
the  property,  or  means  for  exercise  and  even  play,  of 
children.' 

Culture-Epoch  Theory. — The  '  culture-epoch  '  theory  of  the 
Herbartians  is  one  development  of  this  view  of  the  parallelism 
of  the  history  of  the  individual  and  of  the  race  to  which  he 
belongs,  with  which  has  been  associated  the  correspondence  of 
the  ages  of  savagery,  barbarism  and  civilisation  in  the  indi- 
vidual and  in  the  race.  Some  of  the  best  arguments  pro  and 
con  may  be  read  in  detail  in  Lange's  discussion  of  '  Apper- 
ception'  (347,  p.  115)  and  Capesius's  suggestive  essay  on 
'Collective  Development  and  Individual  Development.' 
Lange  points  out  that  the  child  of  to-day  comes  into  contact, 
in  the  various  social  classes  by  which  he  is  surrounded,  with 
almost  every  epoch  of  the  past  history  of  his  race,  so  complex 
is  modern  civilisation ;  Dr  Stockner  remarks  that  there  is  no 
absolutely  continual  ascent  in  development  — '  it  has  its 
mountains  and  valleys.'  Dr  Lange  again  styles  the  '  culture- 
epoch  '  theory  'a  child  of  necessity,'  and  declares  that  to-day 
'  there  is  no  need  for  the  child  to  lead  a  nomad  life,  for  the 
child  is  now  a  bearer  of  culture,  not  the  adult  of  ages  past, 
and  to  him  may  well  be  applied,  '  What  you  have  inherited 
from  your  fathers,  acquire  it  in  order  to  possess  it.' 

Miss  Nina  C  Vandewalker,  in  her  discussion  of  'The 
Culture-Epoch  Theory  from  an  Anthropological  Standpoint,' 
criticising  the  Herbartian  'culture-epoch'  theory,  justly 
remarks  that  'in  considering  race-development  the  fact  is 
often  overlooked  that  such  development  has  not  been  homo- 
geneous and  uniform,  and  that  progress  from  cultural  infancy 
to  the  maturity  of  civilisation  cannot  be  traced  in  any  one 


THE    PERIODS   OF   CHILDHOOD  57 

people  .  .  .  hence,  at  any  historic  period,  people  could  be 
found  in  any  or  all  of  these  stages,  with  infinite  gradations 
between  them'  (659,  p.  382).  The  North  American  Indians, 
for  instance,  at  their  discovery,  represented  practically  all 
grades  below  that  of  the  high  civilisations  of  Europe  and  Asia, 
except  that  the  lack  of  domesticated  animals  caused  some 
noteworthy  departures  from  the  old-world  developmental 
gradations. 

Aforgan^s  Vie7vs. — Many  writers,  however,  following  in  the 
steps  of  Lewis  H.  Morgan,  the  American  ethnologist,  whose 
work  on  A?icie?it  Society  was  published  in  1878,  have,  with  due 
consideration,  accepted  his  scheme  of  the  development  of 
mankind  through  savagery  and  barbarism  to  civilisation,  and 
correlated  it  with  the  theory  of  the  parallelism  of  the  evolution 
of  culture  in  the  individual  and  the  race,  although  it  is  evident 
that  strict  adhesion  to  Morgan's  epochs  can  no  longer  be  in- 
sisted upon  ;  the  recent  discoveries  and  researches  of  ethnology 
and  anthropology  have  gone  far  beyond  the  outlook  of  his 
time.  The  six  periods,  which,  according  to  Morgan,  preceded 
the  coming  civilisation — some  5000  years  ago — heralded  by 
the  invention  of  writing  and  the  evolution  of  urban  life,  are 
seen  in  the  table  on  p.  58  (compiled  from  his  data),  with  the 
chief  characteristics  of  each. 

Recent  discoveries  in  Egypt  and  the  Babylonian  region 
have,  of  course,  made  the  period  of  5000  years,  which  Morgan 
assigned  to  civilisation,  absurdly  low,  and  ethnological  studies 
all  over  the  world  have  demonstrated  the  great  relativity  of 
the  epochs  and  periods  assumed  by  him,  though  enough  truth 
remains  in  them  to  be  very  suggestive  in  education. 

Professor  Woods  Hutchiiiso?is  Periods  of  Childhood. — Pro- 
fessor Woods  Hutchinson  (312,  p.  220),  from  the  considera- 
tion of  anthropological  data,  and  the  observation  of  the  growth 
of  the  child-mind,  comes  to  the  conclusion  that,  for  the  alleged 
parallel  between  the  development  of  the  individual  and  that  of 
the  race,  there  is  '  a  sound  physical  basis,  although  no  hard- 
and-fast  lines  can  be  drawn  between  the  successive  stages,'  and 
adopts  the  different  methods  of  food-getting  as  'the  basis  for 
division  into  stages,  least  open  to  objection  and  most  uniform 
in  its  results.'  l)r  Hutchinson  makes  out  five  stages,  which, 
with  their  chief  characteristics,  are  given  in  the  table  on  p.  59, 
modified  from  that  of  the  author,  and  containing  the  gist  of 
his  whole  paper. 


58 


THE   CHILD 


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THE   PERIODS   OF   CHILDHOOD 


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assaults,  wars)  ;  '  gangs  ' 

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Dr  Hutchinson  looks  forward  to  the  arrangement  of  the 
school  curriculum  upon  these  or  very  similar  lines,  observing 
that  '  if  the  sacred  multiplication  table  were  reserved  until  this 
stage  (the  fifth,  when  the  first  real  recognition  of  the  value  and 


6o 


THE   CHILD 


"  sense "  of  arithmetic  appears),  it  would  be  keenly  enjoyed 
instead  of  hated  as  a  "  grind,"  and  mastered  in  no  time.' 

Powells  Stages  and  their  Characteristics. — Major  J.  AV. 
Powell  (505,  p.  121),  in  his  studies  of  the  development  of 
human  society,  recognises  'three  grand  stages,  savagery, 
barbarism,  civilisation,'  with  a  dawning  fourth,  enlighten- 
ment. For  comparison  with  more  or  less  corresponding 
stages  in  the  life  of  the  individual,  the  following  table, 
constructed  from  the  data  in  Major  Powell's  essay,  may 
be  of  interest : — 


Savagery. 

Barbarism. 

Civilisation. 

Artefacts 

age  of  stone 

age  of  clay 

age  of  iron 

Navigation 

canoe  (paddle) 

boat  (oars) 

ship  (sails) 

Music 

rhythm 

rhythm           and 

rhythm,  melody,  and 

melody 

harmony 

Society 

kinship  clan 

kinship  tribes 

age  of  nations 

Society 

maternal  kinship  most 

paternal   kinship 

territorial   boundaries 

sacred 

most   sacred 

most  sacred 

Law  designed 

to  secure  peace 

to   secure    peace 

to   secure  peace,   au- 

and authority 

thority  and  justice 

Law  extends  to 

kindred  only 

kindred   and  re- 

all the  people  of  the 

tainers 

nation 

Language 

age  of  sentence-words 

age     of    phrase- 
words 

age  of  idea-words 

Writing 

picture-writings 

hieroglyphs 

alphabets 

Grammar 

no  verb  '  to  be ' 

no  verb  '  to  read ' 

parts  of  speech 

Religion 

beast  polytheism 

nature          poly- 
theism 

monotheism 

Powers  of  na- 

feared as  evil  demons 

worshipped       as 

apprenticed  servants 

ture  are 

gods 

Wolf  is 

oracular  god 

howling  beast 

connecting    link   in 
systematic  zoology 

Mathematics 

count  only 

arithmetic 

geometry 

Vision  is  limi- 

opinion 

horizon 

powers    of    telescope 

ted  by 

and  microscope 

Reason  is  based 

zoomorphic  analogies 

anthropomorphic 

intrinsic  homologies 

on 

analogies 

Greatest  intel- 

difference      between 

limited  powers  of 

physical    explanation 

lectual      dis- 

animate  and    inani- 

animals 

of  powers  and  won- 

covery 

mate,    organic    and 

ders  of  the  universe  ; 

inorganic,  living  and 

intellectual     superi- 

dead 

ority  of  man 

Deification 

beasts  are  gods 

gods  are  men 

men     are      as     gods, 
knowing  good  from 

evil 

THE   PERIODS   OF   CHILDHOOD 


6i 


In  his  study  of  the  development  of  '  the  human  activities 
which  are  designed  to  give  pleasure,'  Powell  (508,  p.  21) 
recognises  four  stages  of  culture  through  which  the  races  of 
men  have  passed,  or  are  now  passing,  viz.,  the  hunter  stage, 
the  shepherd  stage,  the  tyrant  (or  monarchical)  stage,  and  the 
freedom  (rejnesentative  government,  science)  stage.  The 
corresponding  evolution  of  the  various  resthetic  arts,  in  these 
diverse  periods,  is  indicated  in  the  following  table,  based  upon 
Powell's  paper : — 


Art. 

Hunter 
Stage. 

Shepherd 
St.-ige. 

Monarchical 
Stage. 

Freedom 
Stage. 

Music     .     . 
Graphic  Art 
Drama    . 
Romance     . 
Poetry    .     . 

rhythm 
sculpture 
dance 
beast  fable 
personification 

melody 
relief 
sacrifice 
power  myth 
similitude 

harmony 

perspective 

ceremony 

necromancy 

allegory 

symphony 
chiaro-oscuro 
histrionic  art 
novel 
trope 

Some  parallelism  exists  here,  also,  between  the  development 
of  the  individual  and  that  of  the  race,  although  the  com- 
parisons are  often  hazardous.  One  of  the  best  of  the  more 
recent  attempts  to  classify  the  races  of  men  upon  a  culture 
basis  is  made  by  Grosse,  in  his  very  interesting  and  suggestive 
monograph  on  the  family  and  the  early  social  economy  of 
mankind.  Without  any  rigidity,  the  following  groups,  accord- 
to  Grosse,  represent,  in  general  fashion,  the  course  of  human 
history  :  (i)  Lower  hunters  ;  (2)  higher  hunters  ;  (3)  pastoral ; 
(4)  lower  agriculturalists;  (5)  higher  agriculturalists.  Such-  a 
classification,  however,  is  not  evolutionary  in  the  strict  sense 
of  the  term,  for  all  peoples  have  not  passed  through  the  same 
stages,  while  there  is  a  considerable  difference  often  between 
two  peoples  in  the  same  stage  of  culture. 

£os  071  the  Cult  lire- Epoch  TJieory. — The  earlier  writers  of 
the  last  quarter  of  a  century  who  discussed  the  development 
of  human  culture,  it  will  be  seen,  agree  in  recognising  above 
the  first  and  most  primitive  epoch  of  the  race's  existence, 
three  successive  stages  or  periods  characterised  by  hunting, 
the  domestication  of  animals,  and  agriculture  respectively,  and 
with  this  theory  usually  went  the  corollary  that  every  people 
must  of  necessity  pass  through  these  epochs,  in  the  order 
named,  on  their  road  to  culture  and  civilisation.     Even  so 


02  THE   CHILD 

recent  an  authority  as  G.  de  Mortillet,  in  his  History  of 
Hunting,  Fishing  and  Agriculture,  seems  to  hold  to  this  view. 
Some  few  writers,  however,  hke  Schurtz,  Petri  and  Grosse, 
have  expressed  more  or  less  doubt  as  to  the  validity  of  these 
epochs,  and  put  forward  the  view  that,  as  the  natural  result 
of  environment  or  of  racial  proclivities,  hunting,  the  domesti- 
cation of  animals  and  agriculture,  have  often  been  of  inde- 
pendent and  by  no  means  successive  development.  The 
latest  argument  upon  the  subject  is  the  essay  of  Eos  (67),  who, 
for  the  first  time,  points  out  the  real  condition  of  these  arts 
and  avocations  among  the  most  primitive  races  of  the  globe 
(the  Veddahs  of  Ceylon  and  some  of  the  Indian  tribes  of 
i3razil,  e.g.),  and  their  relation  to  social  status  and  environ- 
ment, especially  as  to  the  sexual  incident  of  the  distribution 
of  labour,  and  the  complexities  which  have  resulted  from  the 
play  of  the  two  most  important  factors  of  all  human  develop- 
ment— the  hunger-impulse,  which  tends  to  the  preservation  of 
the  individual,  and  the  love-impulse,  which  makes  for  the 
preservation  of  the  species.  According  to  Bos,  there  are 
many  facts  which  speak  against  the  recognition  of  the  three 
'epochs'  under  consideration  as  'stages  of  culture.'  Many 
animals  have  the  hunting  instinct  well  developed,  as  others 
have  the  storing  impulse.  We  are  prone  to  think  of  agricul- 
ture as  necessarily  connected  with  (and  subsequent  to)  the 
domestication  of  animals,  while,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  we  find 
certain  forms  of  agriculture  attaining  a  comparatively  high 
development  among  the  North  American  Indians,  the  Pacific 
Islanders  and  other  more  or  less  savage  or  barbarous  peoples, 
without  the  assistance  of  any  domesticated  animal  whatever. 
Nor  can  it  be  said  that  all  agricultural  peoples  are  higher  than 
all  hunting  peoples  in  the  scale  of  culture,  for  leisure  for  art 
and  social  institutions  of  a  nature  suited  to  their  environment 
have  more  than  once  elevated  the  latter  above  the  former. 
Some  of  the  Indian  tribes  of  Brazil,  according  to  Karl  von 
den  Steinen,  are,  in  a  sense,  good  agriculturists,  without  pos- 
sessing more  than  a  menagerie  of  tame  (not  domesticated  or 
utilised)  beasts  and  birds ;  they  might,  perhaps,  be  compared 
to  children  with  their  captive  pets  and  their  garden-plots, 
without  the  artificialities  springing  from  adult  environment. 
The  result  of  the  investigations  of  the  economic  life  of  primi- 
tive peoples,  as  we  now  have  them  at  least,  shows  that  no 
people  is  absolutely  confined  to  one  business  or  occupation 


THE  rERlODS  OF   CHILDHOOD  6^ 

during  any  stage  of  '  culture ' ;  that  industry  is  often  younger 
than  agriculture,  and  agriculture  often  earlier  than  hunting  and 
fishing  ;  the  beginnings  of  them  all  really  being  present  in  the 
remotest  periods  of  human  history,  ready  to  be  developed  by 
the  touch  of  environment  or  necessity,  the  mighty  influence  of 
surrounding  nature  upon  the  arts  of  man,  or  those  impulses 
within  him  which  lead  him  to  do  the  thing  necessary  for  life 
and  pleasure  with  the  least  expenditure  of  energy.  That 
agriculture  should  naturally  appear  alongside  hunting  in 
one  and  the  same  tribe  at  one  and  the  same  time 
(as  among  certain  Indian  tribes  of  Brazil)  is  really  the 
result  of  sex-adjustments  and  not  an  evidence  of  retrogression 
and  degeneracy,  for  here  man  is  the  hunter,  woman  the  tiller 
of  the  soil,  and  the  economic  life  of  each  has  a  certain 
autonomy  of  development  which  repeats  itself  again  and  again 
in  the  history  of  the  highest  civilised  races.  Out  of  this  duality, 
Bos  believes  there  arose  the  unity  of  the  family.  The  fact 
noted  by  von  den  Steinen  (67,  p.  209)  that  in  certain  Indian 
tribes  the  men  roast  their  food  (largely  flesh  and  fish),  while  the 
women  boil  theirs  (largely  vegetable),  is  paralleled  in  other 
parts  of  the  world  as  well ;  and  the  c/ie/  of  the  modern  hotel 
or  millionaire's  palace  shows  that  the  art  is  not  extinct  in  the 
male  half  of  the  race  at  this  late  day,  while  woman's  vegetarian 
predilections,  and  her  historical  skill  in  the  use  of  herbs  and 
plant-poisons,  are  the  proof  that  she  also  has  not  forgotten 
the  early  lessons  of  her  sex.  And  Professor  O.  T.  Mason 
has  recently  shown  how  much  agriculture  among  primitive 
peoples  is  the  art  of  woman,  and  how  its  methods  and  its 
implements  are  largely  her  ideas  and  her  inventions.  Bos's 
general  conclusion  is  that  just  as  we  cannot  exactly  identify  or 
make  the  same  in  every  respect  the  same  thing  when  done  by 
two  different  individuals,  so,  with  the  economic  forms  and 
methods  of  the  race,  we  must  be  careful  not  to  identify  them 
or  make  them  exactly  equivalent  to  stages  of  culture,  for  such 
they  can  be  only  in  the  most  general  interpretation,  if  at  all. 
A  better  way,  for  the  present  at  least,  to  classify  human  indus- 
tries, thinks  Bos,  is  as  follows :  (a)  CoIIeitional  industries 
— gathering,  picking  up,  etc.,  of  plants,  animals  and  minerals, 
from  which  the  transition  to  hunting  and  fishing  and  some  of 
the  aspects  of  agriculture  naturally  takes  place.  (/-')  r?-odiictive 
industries — in  which  men  assist  nature  in  the  production  of 
natural   products — holing  and   grubbing  (and  very  primitive 


64  The  child 

horticulture),  domestication  of  animals,  agriculture  (with  the 
aid  of  the  plough,  the  cow  and  the  horse) ;  forestry,  (c) 
Transformative  industries — arts  and  manufacturing  industries, 
architecture,  milk -industry,  etc.  {d)  Locomotion  industries — 
trade,  commerce,  etc.  In  all  of  these  the  influence  of  sex  is 
often  only  second  to  that  of  environment,  while  in  some  cases 
it  is  even  greater. 

After  the  arguments  adduced  by  Bos,  it  will  be  admitted 
how  difficult  the  verification  of  the  three  culture-stages  under 
discussion  is  in  the  life  of  the  individual.  Thoreau,  who  held 
that,  'even  in  civilised  communities,  the  embryo  man  passes 
through  the  hunter  stage  of  development,'  wrote  :  '  There  is  a 
period  in  the  history  of  the  individual,  as  of  the  race,  when 
the  hunters  are  the  "  best  men,"  as  the  Algonquins  called 
them.  We  cannot  but  pity  the  boy  who  has  never  fired 
a  gun ;  he  is  no  more  humane,  while  his  education  has  been 
sadly  neglected.  This  was  my  answer  with  respect  to  those 
youths  who  were  bent  on  this  pursuit,  trusting  that  they  would 
soon  outgrow  it'  (638,  p.  213).  So,  too,  with  fishing — for 
fishing  and  hunting,  Thoreau  tells  us,  are  'oftenest  the  young 
man's  introduction  to  the  forest  [where  of  old  dwelt  his  pro- 
genitors of  the  prime],  and  the  most  original  part  of  himself.' 

The  '  collection-instinct,'  so-called,  characteristic  of  certain 
periods  of  childhood  and  youth,  deserves  study  in  the  light  of 
the  researches  of  Bos  and  others  and  the  studies  of  De  Sanctis. 
Especially  important  is  the  relation  of  environment  and  oppor- 
tunity to  culture  in  connection  with  theories  of  'culture- 
epochs.' 

Social  Types. — Some  light  is  thrown  upon  the  question  of 
'culture-epochs '  and  'developmental  stages'  by  Demolins  in 
his  study  of  the  'social  types'  of  Southern  and  Central  France, 
where  the  great  role  of  the  nature  of  the  place,  and  of  the 
labour  in  the  formation  of  these  'types'  is  pointed  out, 
although  the  author  seems  to  emphasise  too  much  the  environ- 
mental factors  of  a  more  or  less  physical  sort  to  the  detriment 
of  the  historical,  religious,  moral  and  artistic.  One  '  social 
type '  may  be  derived  from  pastoral  art,  another  from  the 
exploitation  of  fruit  trees,  a  third  from  manufacture,  a  fourtli 
from  transportation  and  commerce,  while  tl'.c  'pclile  culture' 
and  the  'grande  culture'  have  each  their  peculiar  'types.' 
There  are  also  varieties  and  sub-divisions  of  these  '  social 
types.'    The  shepherd  type  of  the  Pyrenees  and  the  Alps  differs 


THE   PERIODS   OF   CHILDHOOD  65 

from  that  of  the  calcareous  plateaus  of  the  Ge'vaudan  and 
the  Rouergue,  and  both  of  these  from  that  of  the  volcanic 
region  of  the  Auvergne ;  the  Limousin  and  Perigord  type  of 
the  chestnut  and  walnut  region  is  not  altogether  one  with  the 
Provencal  type  of  the  olive  region  or  with  the  Gascon- 
Armagnac  type  of  the  vine  region  ;  the  '  social  types '  of  the 
river  valleys  of  the  plateaus  differ  also  in  their  several  varieties. 
The  social  condition  of  Central  and  Southern  France  still  feels 
the  influence  of  pastoral  communism,  which  has  contributed  so 
much  to  make  the  people  live,  as  it  were,  on  the  family,  their 
friends  and  neighbours,  the  clan,  the  State,  unconsciously  form- 
ing some  of  the  worst  developments  of  modern  French  politics. 
In  this  connection  also  one  may  well  read  T.  E.  Cliffe 
Leslie's  admirable  article  on  '  Auvergne,'  in  which  the  culture- 
shaping  powers  of  mountain  and  plain  are  placed  in  contrast. 
'Greater  differences  of  human  life,  motive  and  pursuit,' says 
this  author,  'are  to  be  found  in  parts  of  the  province  of 
Auvergne,  a  few  miles  from  each  other — in  adjacent  districts 
of  mountain  and  plain,  for  example — than  some  which  are 
often  pointed  to  between  Frenchmen  and  Englishmen  as 
the   consequences   of  an   original   difference   of  race'    (354, 

P-  753)- 

As  Dr  W.  J.  McGee  has  pointed  out :  ^  'In  desert  regions  the 
tendency  of  common  strife  against  a  hard  physical  environment 
is  towards  the  development  of  co-operation  and  interaction, 
which  stimulate  the  altruism  of  civilisation.'  This  may  have 
contributed  to  make  not  a  few  primitive  peoples,  living  in  very 
unfavourable  environments,  hospitable,  social  and  altruistic  to 
a  degree  much  beyond  what  one  might  expect  from  the  general 
character  of  their  arts  and  institutions,  and  we  see  the  same 
fact  repeated,  perhaps  in  the  development  of  the  same  unselfish 
trait  in  children,  subject  to  a  like  harsli  and  unfavourable 
milieu.  Nature  can  come  dangerously  near  sometimes  to 
producing  figs  from  thistles.  It  has  been  given  to  some 
peoples,  as  to  some  individuals,  to  simulate  without  the  aid  of 
the  arts  and  institutions  that  have  been  at  the  disposal  of 
others  (moving  with  perfect  order  througli  the  various  stages 
of  culture)  some  of  the  noblest  virtues  and  best  graces  of 
human  kind.  A  'lodge  in  some  vast  wilderness'  has  more 
than  once  tamed  a  savage  people,  no  less  than  a  single  savage 
human.  Not  'self-help'  alone,  as  Carlyle  says,  does  the 
^  Science,  Jan.  14,  189S,  p.  54. 


66  THE   CHILD 

young  Islimael  acquire  in  the  destitution  of  the  wild  desert> 
but  the  higher  and  nobler  other-help  as  well.  The  study  of 
the  effects  of  several  environments  upon  the  same  race,  and  of 
one  and  the  same  environment  upon  different  races,  of  change 
of  environment,  of  painful  and  pleasurable  environments, 
etc.,  has  hardly  yet  been  entered  upon  in  the  true  anthropo- 
psychological  sense. 

Periods  of  Cldhi  Life. — Not  only  docs  the  child  seem  to 
recapitulate  physically  and  mentally  the  chief  points  of  the 
race's  history,  but  his  own  development  is  fairly  teeming  with 
epochs  and  periods,  isolated  spots  sometimes,  the  interpreta- 
tion of  which  is  not  yet  at  hand. 

Ancient  philosophy,  modern  folk-lore  and  the  poetry  of  all 
ages  have  more  or  less  to  say  concerning  some  of  these 
'periods  of  life,'  but  the  great  mass  of  them,  many  of  which 
have  only  recently  come  to  light  since  the  study  of  the  growing 
child  has  come  to  be  so  zealously  pursued,  yet  await  satis- 
factory explanations.  The  enumeration  of  some  of  these 
'periods,'  with  some  few  words  of  comment,  may  not  be 
without  interest,  since  the  subject  is  one  which  has  not  yet 
been  discussed  to  any  great  extent,  and  most  of  the  facts  are 
new  and  of  great  value. 

Pythagoras,  the  philosopher  of  Samos,  who  lived  more 
than  five  centuries  before  the  Christian  era,  used  to  delimit  the 
various  epochs  in  the  life  of  man  thus :  Child,  1-20  years  ; 
young  man,  20-40  years ;  man,  40-60  years ;  old  man,  60-80 
years ;  dead,  80  years  and  over.  In  the  Li  Ki,  the  sacred 
book  of  the  Chinese,  we  find  the  following  ancient  division 
(559)  P-  65) :  '  When  one  is  ten  years  old,  we  call  him  a  boy ; 
he  goes  (out)  to  school.  When  he  is  twenty,  we  call  him  a 
youth  ;  he  is  capped.  When  he  is  thirty,  we  say  "  he  is  at  his 
maturity  "  ;  he  has  a  wife.  When  he  is  forty,  we  say  "  he  is  in 
his  vigour";  he  is  employed  in  office.  When  he  is  fifty,  we 
bay  "  he  is  getting  grey  "  ;  he  can  discharge  all  the  duties  of  an 
officer.  When  he  is  sixty,  we  say  "  he  is  getting  old  "  \  he  gives 
directions  and  instructions.  When  he  is  seventy,  we  say  "he  is 
old";  he  delegates  his  duties  to  others.  At  eighty  or  ninety 
we  say  "he  is  very  old."  \A'hen  he  is  seven,  we  say  that  he  is 
an  object  of  pitying  love.  Such  a  child  and  one  who  is  very 
old,  though  they  may  be  chargeable  with  crime,  are  not  subject 
to  punishment.  At  a  hundred  he  is  called  a  centenarian,  and 
has  to  be  fed.'     Shakespeare,  sociologically-minded,  like  the 


THE   PERIODS   OF   CHILDHOOD  6/ 

old  Chinese  writer,  has  immortaHsed  the  'seven  ages'  of  man, 
which  are  his  'acts.' 

In  the  popular  literature  of  Germany  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  the  following  characterisation  of  the  various  epochs  of 
woman's  life  is  to  be  found  (498,  I.  p.  300) : — 


X.  Years — Child-nature. 
XX.       ,,        Tender  virgin. 
XXX.      ,,        Housewife. 
XL.      ,,        Matron. 
L.      ,,        Grandmother. 


LX.  Years — Aged. 
LXX.      „        Ugly. 
LXXX.       ,,        Waste  and  cold. 
XC.       „        Martyr. 
C.       ,,        Dead. 


The  English  folk-rhyme  of  the  diverse  ages  of  man  occurs 
in  Tusser's  Five  Hittidred  Points  of  Good  Husbajidry, 
published  in  1557  : — 

'  The  first  seven  years,  bring  up  as  a  child  ; 
The  next  to  learning,  for  waxing  too  wild  ; 
The  next,  to  keep  under  Sir  Hobbard  de  Hoy ; 
The  next,  a  man,  and  no  longer  a  boy.' 

Here   we  have   four  periods  of  seven  years  each,    with    the 
attainment  of  manhood  at  the  twenty-eighth  year. 

Tlie  Psychological  'Ages.'—Dx  E.  C.  Sanford,  of  Clark 
University,  Worcester,  Mass.,  in  the  course  of  a  lecture  before 
the  Summer  School  of  1899,  suggested  a  scientific  rearrange- 
ment of  the  '  Seven  Ages '  of  Shakespeare,  somewhat  as 
follows  :  I.  Birth  to  three  years.  The  age  of  physical  adjust 
ment,  learning  to  talk  and  to  walk ;  period  of  emotional 
fickleness  and  self-regardfulness.  2.  Th-ee  to  fifteen  years. 
The  age  of  social  adjustment — the  school  age.  During  this 
period  the  physical  development  goes  on  towards  complete- 
ness. The  child  begins  to  see  the  advantage  of  paying  some 
attention  to  the  rights  of  others,  is  less  self-regardful,  but 
reflective  thought,  persistency  and  will-quality  are  still  weak. 
3.  Fifteen  to  twenty  five  years.  This  period  of  youth  is  largely 
one  of  transition.  Boyhood  and  girlhood  are  practically  com- 
plete ;  there  is  rapid  growth  and  strong  vitality,  and  heredity 
makes  itself  felt.  Great  emotional  changes  take  place  at  this 
epoch.  It  is  the  period  of  religion,  hero-worship,  ideals, 
dreams,  romance,  of  the  new  sense  of  self  and  of  others,  of  the 
craving  for  notice,  sympathy,  companionship,  love.  Human 
beings  at  this  time  begin  to  do  right  because  they  feel  it  is 
right.  The  bad  and  morbid  aspects  of  this  period  are  juvenile 
crime  and  the  psychic  disturbances  of  adolescence  and  the  like. 

6 


68  THE   CHILD 

4.  Tive)ity-five  to  forty  years.  The  age  of  action,  of  establish- 
ment in  vocation,  business,  work.  This  is  the  period  of  young 
manhood,  wilii  all  that  that  means.  5.  Forty  to  sixty-five  years. 
The  beginning  of  the  period  of  middle  age  sees  quite  a  break 
with  the  previous  age  of  young  manhood,  of  which  the  main 
factors  are  mental.  By  middle  age  the  man  comes  to  recognise 
the  impossibility  of  the  fulfilment  of  the  ambitions  of  his  youth, 
and  turns  to  his  children  for  their  realisation,  or,  if  childless, 
turns  to  philanthropy,  charity,  etc.  6.  Sixty-five  to  seventy  five 
years.  This  period  of  elderly  lite  is,  in  people  who  have  lived 
properly  and  not  abused  their  body  or  their  faculties?,  a  period 
of  considerable  activity  in  lines  similar  to  those  of  the  previous 
period,  or,  in  some  cases,  of  scientific  or  business  activity  to  a 
noteworthy  degree.  7.  Sevetity  five  years  and  on7vards.  Period 
in  which  the  powers  begin  to  break  up  and  the  end  of  life 
approaches. 

The  Australian  '  Ages  '  ;  other  Primitive  Ideas. — Certain 
Central  Australian  tribes,  whose  ceremonies  of  childhood  and 
manhood  have  been  described  by  Professor  Baldwin  Spencer,  ^ 
recognise  the  following  periods  of  life,  for  which  they  possess 
special  terms  :  i.  Amba-qiierka — mere  child;  2.  Utpncrka — 
applied  to  the  boys  who,  at  the  age  of  10-12  years,  have  been 
'tossed  in  the  air,'  and  painted  on  the  back  and  chest;  3. 
Arrakm-ta — after  circumcision,  which  takes  place  at  puberty 
or  very  shortly  after;  4.  Ertwa-kurka — after  the  youth  has 
undergone  the  ceremony  of  '  sub-incision,'  which  occurs  a  short 
time  after  circumcision  ;  5.  Urliara — after  he  has  gone  through 
the  '  Engwurra,  or  Fire  Ceremony,'  a  rite  to  which  young  men 
of  20-25  years,  or  even  somewhat  older,  are  subjected. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  Ulpmerka  boy  is  told  that 
'  this  ceremony  will  promote  his  growth,  and  that  the  time  has 
now  come  when  he  must  no  longer  play  with  and  live  at  the 
camp  of  the  women,  but  must  go  to  that  of  the  unmarried  men 
and  live  with  them.  He  begins  to  accompany  the  men  in 
their  hunting  expeditions,  listens  to  their  talks  around  the 
camp-fire  at  night,  and  looks  forward  to  the  time  when  he  shall 
be  admitted  to  the  privilege  of  manhood.'  Of  the  Engwurra 
ceremony,  the  natives  say  it  makes  the  boys  ertwa  mfirra 
oknirra,  '  men,  good,  very,  or  great.' 

The  Omaha  Indians,  as  Miss  Alice  C.  Fletcher  notes  in 
her  account   of  the   ritual   of  the  scalp-lock   (212,   p.    447), 
1  Nature,  Vol.  LVI.  pp.  136-139- 


THE   PERIODS   OF   CHILDHOOD  69 

recognised      four      stages      in      man's     life       upon     earth : 

1.  Childhood,  which  was  conceived  to  begin  when  the  child 
was  able  to  walk  steadily  and  be  independent  of  its  mother. 

2.  Youth.     3.  Manhood.     4.  Old  age.     This  simple  division 
serves  for  very  many  other  primitive  peoples  as  well. 

In  China,  where  reverence  and  ceremony  have  always 
counted  for  so  much,  the  passage  from  childhood  to  manhood 
was  marked  out  ages  ago  in  a  fashion  peculiar  to  the  Flowery 
Kingdom.  In  the  Li  Ki  (the  text  of  which  is  certainly  1900 
years  old)  the  following  are  given  as  proper  answers  to  ques- 
tions respecting  the  'grown-up'  character  of  individuals  of 
various  ranks:  Emperor:  He  has  begun  to  wear  a  robe  so 
many  feet  long.  Ruler  of  a  State :  He  is  able  to  attend  to  the 
services  in  the  ancestral  temple,  and  at  the  altars  of  the  spirits 
of  the  land  and  grain.  So)i  of  great  Officer:  He  is  able  to 
drive.  Son  of  ordiftary  Officer:  He  can  manage  the  conveying 
of  a  salutation,  or  a  message.  Son  of  conunon  Man :  He  is 
able  to  carry  a  bundle  of  firewood  (559,  p-  115). 

The  'Ages'  of  Emotional  Expression. — Mantegazza,  in  his 
work  on  Physiognomy  and  Expression^  thus  divides  human  life 
as  marked  into  periods  by  characteristic  joys  (399,  p.  118)  : 
I.  Infancy  and  Childhood.  Good  humour  ;  consciousness  of 
perfect  health.  2.  Adolescence.  Heedlessness ;  muscular  in- 
toxication. 3.  Youth.  Joys  of  love ;  contemplation  of  the 
world  through  rose-coloured  glasses.  4.  Adult  age.  The 
pleasures  of  strife  and  of  satisfied  self-esteem.  5.  Old  age. 
The  tender  joys  of  affection ;  the  melancholy  of  tender 
memories. 

The  corresponding  grief  periods  are  as  follows  :  i.  Child- 
hood. Cries  without  tears;  abundant  weeping.  2.  Adolescence. 
Calm  and  melancholy  sadness.  3.  Youth.  Menacing  reaction. 
4.  Adtilt  age.  Expression  of  bitterness.  5.  Old  age.  Plaintive 
groans  and  tears. 

As  a  general  formula,  or  resume  of  the  comparative 
physiology  of  expression  at  different  ages,  Mantegazza  gives 
the  following  (399,  p.  223) : — i.  Little  child.  Expression  strong 
and  poor.  2.  Older  child.  Expression  strong  and  fairly  rich 
in  peculiarities.  3.  Young  fnan.  Expression  strong,  rich,  and, 
above  all,  expansive.  4.  Adult.  Expression  better  balanced  ; 
rather  richer  in  peculiarities  of  great  intensity ;  becoming  less 
and  less  expansive.  5.  Old  7nan.  Expression  feeble,  un- 
certain and  very  concentric. 


70  THE   CHILD 

According  to  Mantegazza  the  expression  of  a  little  child 
under  painful  emotions  '  resembles  that  of  a  monkey  or  a 
negro,'  while,  in  a  child  of  three,  with  its  few  s[)eech-gestures, 
we  have  before  us  'the  picture  of  a  savage  who  accentuates 
badly  the  striking  points  of  his  discourse  and  the  extreme 
degrees  of  his  emotion.'  The  'expression  of  transition,' to  be 
noted  at  tlie  intermediate  age  between  early  childhood  and 
youth,  persists  in  the  permanent  condition  in  the  men  of  lower 
race,  and,  in  the  higher  races,  in  stupid  individuals.  In  old 
age,  expression  takes  on  again  an  infantile  character,  while 
'feminine  expression  may  be  characterised  in  a  word  by  saying 
that  it  somewhat  resembles  that  of  the  child.' 

Some  of  the  anatomists,  physiologists  and  anthropologists 
have  gone  into  great  detail  in  distinguishing  the  growth  periods 
of  the  human  body  and  its  organs. 

The  '  A}::;es '  of  the  Physiologist  attd  the  Anatomist. — Dr  E. 
Verrier  (663,  pp.  6-8),  who  confesses  his  liking,  which 
Hippocrates  shared,  for  the  good  number  seven,  divides  human 
life  in  these  periods  :  i.  First  childhood  (Je  premier  age),  from 
birth  to  seven  years,  the  epoch  of  dentition.  2.  Second  child- 
hood [la  deuxieme  enfa/ice),  from  seven  to  fourteen  years,  epoch 
of  the  production  of  the  seminal  liquid.  3.  Adolescence,  from 
fourteen  to  tsventy-one  years,  until  the  appearance  of  the  beard. 
4.  Yonth  (Ji/venilitc)  from  twenty-one  to  twenty-eight  years,  until 
the  complete  growth  of  the  body.  5.  Manhood  {Phommefait), 
from  twenty-eight  to  forty-nine  years.  6.  Age  {Thomme  age),  from 
forty-nine  to  fifty-six  years.  7.  Old  age  {la  vieillesse),  from  fifty- 
six  years  until  death.  The  first  childhood  may  be  divided  into 
sub-periods:  (i)  Suckling-time,  from  birth  to  the  end  of  the 
second  year.     (2)  From  the  second  to  the  third  year. 

The  first  childhood  is  susceptible  of  several  sub-divisions, 
and  Dr  Verrier  applies  the  term  '  new-born '  to  the  child  only 
till  the  falling  of  the  umbilical  cord,  usually  about  the  fifth  day 
of  life. 

Lacassagne  recognises  the  following  periods  of  human  life 
from  the  beginning  to  the  end  :  i.  Fatal  life.  2.  First  childhood 
up  to  the  seventh  month.  3.  Second  childhood,  from  the 
seventh  month  to  the  second  year.  4.  Third  childhood,  from 
the  second  to  the  seventh  year.  5.  Adolescence,  from  the 
seventh  to  the  fifteenth  year.  6.  Pubei-ty,  from  the  fifteenth 
to  the  twentieth  year.  7.  Adult  age,  from  the  twentieth  to  the 
thirtieth  year.     8.    Virility,  from  the  thirtieth  to  the  fortieth 


THE   PERIODS   OF   CHILDHOOD  7I 

year.  g.  '  A^si'e  de  re  fan  r,^  from  the  fortieth  to  the  sixtieth 
year.  10.  Old  age,  from  the  sixtieth  year  till  death  (344, 
p.  85). 

Springer,  from  the  point  of  view  of  growth,  which  he  defines 
as  'not  an  individual  state,  a  particular  biological  force,  simply 
a  manner  of  being  of  the  evolution  of  living  matter — a  char- 
acteristic of  the  first  stadium  of  evolution  '  (607,  p.  15),  recog- 
nises three  periods  of  growth  in  man:  i.  First  ckild/iood,  from 
birth  to  weaning — at  most  two  years  ;  2.  Second  childhood,  from 
weaning  to  puberty  —  lasts  till  about  10-12  years,  varying 
however  a  good  deal  with  sex,  race,  climate,  etc. ;  3.  Early 
mafiliood,  from  puberty  to  complete  development  at  about 
20-22  years  (with  variations). 

An  all-important  factor  of  growth  is  food  (and  mode  of 
taking  food) ;  in  the  critical  transition  epochs  food  plays  a 
dominant  role  physiologically.  The  link  between  the  first  and 
the  second  period  of  childhood  is  weaning  (mastication  begins 
almost  with  walking),  and  after  weaning,  diseases  take  on 
themselves  a  more  adult-like  character,  and  to  the  influence  of 
weaning  upon  nutrition  the  author  credits  '  75  per  cent,  of  the 
deaths  among  infants  confided  to  hired  nurses.'  Weaning  is 
the  critical  period  of  infancy,  and  much  of  the  rachitis  develop- 
ing in  childhood  spring  from  premature  or  from  tardy  weaning. 
It  is  during  the  period  of  growth  that  'all  the  attributes  which 
specially  characterise  the  human  species,  depending  on  the 
nervous  system,  develop,  for  at  birth  the  child's  nervous 
system  is  completely  animal.' 

Tigerstedt,  in  his  Human  Physiology  (640,  II.  p.  412), 
gives  the  common  German  division  of  life-periods  as  follows : 
I.  New-born  child,  from  birth  to  the  fall  of  the  navel-string, 
a  period  of  about  4-5  days.  2.  Suckling,  from  the  end  of  the 
first  period  to  about  the  seventh  or  ninth  month,  the  time  of 
the  first  dentition.  3.  Later  childhood,  up  to  about  the  seventh 
year,  the  time  of  the  second  dentition.  4.  Boyhood,  up  to  the 
beginnings  of  puberty,  some  time  about  the  thirteenth  or  four- 
teenth year.  5.  Youth,  up  to  the  complete  development  of  the 
body,  or  about  19-21  years.  6.  Matuj-eage,  up  to  the  beginning 
of  the  retour{\n  women,  the  climacteric)  between  the  forty-fifth 
and  the  fiftieth  year.  7.  Later  manhood  and  old  age.  Of  these 
periods,  'the  first  five  comprehend  the  time  of  growth,  the 
sixth  is  the  age  of  full  corporeal  and  intellectual  capacity  and 
ability,  while  in  the  seventh  there  gradually  occur  disturbances 


72  THE  CHILD 

in  the  structure  and  functions  of  the  body,  correlated  with 
a  greater  or  less  degree  of  chronic  morbid  influences.' 

Camerer  recognises  two  great  periods  of  growth  in  the  life 
of  the  child  :  i.  The  first  year,  and  chiefly  the  first  half  of  it; 
2.  From  fourteen  to  seventeen  years  in  boys,  and  from  eleven 
to  fourteen  years  in  girls.  The  disturbance  of  the  increase 
in  weight  at  the  beginning  of  the  last  quarter  of  the  first 
year  may  be  ascribed  to  the  development  of  the  teeth.  Arti- 
ficially-nourished infants  remain  for  the  first  half  year  con- 
siderably behind,  are  at  the  end  of  the  first  half  year  about 
one  kilogram  lighter  than  breast-fed  children,  but  have  come 
up  to  the  average  of  the  latter  by  the  end  of  the  first  year 
(loi,  p.  3).  Camerer  seeks  to  distinguish  from  the  growth 
which  takes  place  till  the  attainment  of  full  development,  the 
changes  in  height  and  weight  which,  under  the  influence  of 
external  circumstances,  bring  about  in  most  men  a  slow, 
gradual  increase  of  weight,  etc. — a  gradual  alteration  of  the 
body,  beginning  with  adult  age  and  ceasing  only  with  old  age. 
Other  period-divisions  maybe  found  cited  in  Burk  (91,  p.  254). 

Mr  Arthur  Macdonald,  in  his  'Experimental  Study  of 
Children,'  after  '  comparing  the  results  of  Weissenberg  and 
others,'  concludes  that  the  human  body  has  the  following  six 
periods  of  growth  (383,  p.  1129) :  i.  From  birth  to  the  sixth  or 
eighth  year.  A  period  of  very  rapid  growth — the  body  being 
more  than  twice  as  large  at  the  end  than  at  the  beginning  of  it. 
2.  From  the  eleventh  to  the  fourteenth  year.  A  period  of  slow 
growth.  3.  From  the  sixteenth  to  the  seventeenth  year.  A  period 
marked  by  *  a  sudden  advance  in  growth,  which  is  in  relation 
with  the  development  of  puberty.'  4.  Period  of  slow  groivth, 
'  extending  up  to  thirty  years  for  height,  and  up  to  fifty  for  chest- 
girth,'  when  '  growth  in  the  proper  sense  has  ceased,'  5.  A  period 
of  rest,  which,  'in  normal  conditions  is  from  thirty  to  fifty  years  of 
age,  and  is  one  of  full  symmetrical  development.'  6.  Last  period 
of  life,  'characterised  by  a  decrease  in  all  dimensions  of  the 
body.' 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  these  periods  do  not  always  fall  at 
the  same  age,  and  that,  moreover,  all  post-natal  growth  is  to 
a  very  large  extent  the  maturing  of  impulses  received  during 
fietal  life,  the  intensity  of  which  is  demonstrated  by  the  fact  that 
the  foetus  at  the  end  of  the  foetal  life  is  2500  times  larger  than 
the  ovum  out  of  which  it  has  been  developed. 

John  Huart  (577,  II.  p.  438),  the  Spanish  philosopher  and 


THE   PERIODS   OF   CHILDHOOD  y^ 

physician  of  the  sixteenth  century,  who  recognised  as  the  epoch 
oix^diion, par  excellence,  in  the  human  being  the  years  from  thirty- 
three  to  fifty,  held  that  childhood  did  not  end  at  the  same  time 
with  all  men — with  some  the  close  of  childhood  was  the  twelfth, 
with  others  the  fourteenth,  and  with  others  again  the  sixteenth 
year.  With  the  last  every  epoch  of  their  life  was  longer  than 
with  the  others— their  youth  lasted  till  forty,  their  manhood  till 
sixty,  while  eighty  years  saw  the  close  of  their  old  age.  With 
those  whose  childhood  had  ended  with  the  twelfth  year,  life  was 
shorter  in  all  respects  ;  their  use  of  reason,  moreover,  was  preco- 
cious, as  was  also  their  loss  of  the  power  of  imagination, 
while  their  beard  and  other  physical  marks  were  also  early 
in  appearance. 

l)r  B.  G.  Alvarez  distinguishes,  after  birth,  the  following 
periods  of  childhood  (5,  p.  10)  :  i.  New-born  child  {recien 
fiacicio),  from  birth  to  the  fall  of  the  remains  of  the  umbilical 
cord  and  its  cicatrisation,  the  last  taking  place  at  least  by  the 
fifteenth  day  of  life,  the  former  most  frequently  at  about  the 
fifth  or  sixth  day  after  birth.  2.  First  childhood  {primera 
infancia),  from  the  sixteenth  day  of  life  up  to  about  the  third 
year,  period  of  completion  of  the  first  dentition  with  the 
appearance  of  the  fifth  group  of  teeth,  the  four  second  molars. 
Precocity  and  retardation  of  dentition  seem  largely  pathological. 
3.  Second  childhood,  from  about  the  third  to  about  the  fifteenth 
year,  when  the  sexual  functions  make  their  appearance,  and  the 
exuberance  of  life  is  not  wholly  self-centred. 

Adolescence,  Dr  Alvarez  takes,  in  its  etymological  sense,  to 
mean  the  period  of  growth,  w'hich,  for  him,  includes  not  only 
all  childhood,  but  the  early  years  of  adult  life  as  well,  extending 
at  least  to  the  twenty-fourth  year.  Adult  he  applies  to  man 
beyond  the  age  of  childhood.  Dr  Alvarez  fairly  represents 
modern  Spanish  writers. 

Anatomists,  physiologists,  and  anthropologists,  who  have 
gone  into  detailed  studies  of  the  various  parts  and  organs  of 
the  body,  have  found  that  all  or  nearly  all  of  them  have 
characteristic  periods  of  growth  and  development,  and  certain 
periodicities  of  acceleration  and  retardation  of  growth  and 
repose — concerning  which  something  is  said  in  another  place 
where  the  questions  of  growth,  variation,  etc.,  are  discussed. 
That  these  '  periods '  or  '  epochs  '  correspond  to  something  in 
the  history  of  the  race  can  readily  be  believed. 

The  'Ages '  recognised  by  Medicine  in  the  Child. — Accord- 


74  THE   CHILD 

ing  to  Dr  W.  S.  Christopher,  of  Chicago,  there  are,  from  the 
medical  point  of  view,  three  critical  periods  in  child-life  :  i. 
Infancy,  practically  the  first  three  years  of  life,  '  with  the 
gastro-enteric  tract  as  the  place  of  least  resistance.'  The  use 
of  the  bottle  seems  one  of  the  chief  factors  in  the  production 
of  great  infant  mortality,  and  '  nursing  is  as  much  a  part  of 
the  reproductive  process  as  the  development  of  the  child  ijt 
uiero.'  Exaggerated  pathogenic  influence  has  been  ascribed 
to  the  process  of  cutting  the  teeth,  '  which  is  practically  without 
harm  to  the  child,  and  the  relationship  between  the  dangers 
to  child-life  and  the  period  of  dentition  is  purely  one  of  coin- 
cidence.' Food-poisons  are  the  great  danger  here.  2.  T/ie 
fatigue  period — from  seven  to  nine  years — a  period  during 
which  '  fatigue  occurs  very  readily,  and  one  in  which  damage 
to  the  heart  is  likely  to  be  produced.'  Dilated  heart,  shortness 
of  breath,  and  '  an  appearance  of  general  laziness '  (which, 
above  all  things  else,  does  not  call  for  more  exercise,  but  less 
labour  and  fatigue,  less  school-work  and  less  forced  expenditure 
of  energy)  are  common  at  this  time — the  statistics  of  some 
32,800  school-children  (aged  6-13  years)  seem  to  show  that 
'the  child  of  seven  fatigues  less  readily  than  the  child  of  six, 
but  the  child  of  eight  fatigues  more  readily  than  the  child  of 
either  six  or  seven.  The  child  of  nine  fatigues  less  readily  than 
the  child  of  eight,  but  has  a  fatigue  limit  about  equal  to  that 
of  a  child  of  seven.  As  the  years  advance  the  readiness  of 
fatigue  diminishes  materially '  [the  tests  were  concerned  with 
voluntary  motor  ability  and  muscle-strength]  '  until  the  period 
of  puberty  is  reached,  when  again  fatigue  more  readily  occurs 
than  in  the  years  immediately  preceding.'  3.  The  period  of 
puberfy~~m  the  girl  between  twelve  and  a  half  and  fifteen  and  a 
half  years  ;  in  the  boy  somewhat  later — a  period  characterised 
by  danger  to  the  reproductive  organs,  which  are  acquiring  their 
potential  strength,  and  to  the  brain,  now  subject  to  the  great 
strain  of  school-life.  During  this  period  '  the  amount  of  food 
demanded  is  much  larger  than  immediately  before  or  imme- 
diately after';  lack  of  it  and  excessive  study  mean  sterile  women 
by-and-by. 

Periods  from  the  Point  of  View  of  Dcgencracv. — Clouston,  in 
his  study  of  The  N'eiiroses  of  Development  ( 1 1 4,  p.  1 2),  makes  four 
divisions  of  the  developmental  period  of  human  life,  as  follows: 
I.  Formative  and  Embyronic  Stage  (Intra-Uterine  life).  2. 
Period  of  most  rapid  Brain-Growth,  Special  Sense  Education, 


THE   PERIODS   OF   CHILDHOOD  75 

Motor  Co-ordinations  and  Speech  (from  birth  up  to  seven 
years).  3.  Period  of  Co-ordination  of  Motion  and  Emotion 
(from  seven  to  thirteen).  4.  Puberty  and  Adolescence  (from 
thirteen  to  twenty-five).  There  can  also  be  recognised  'a 
period  of  growth  and  development  together  from  birth  to 
seventeen  years,' and  'a  period  of  development  alone  without 
growth,  from  seventeen  to  full  maturity  at  about  twenty-five.' 
The  'functional  and  critical  ages'  within  the  developmental 
epoch,  noted  by  Clouston,  are :  (a)  the  crisis  of  birth ;  (d)  the 
age  of  suckling ;  (c)  the  age  of  dentition ;  (d)  that  of  fastest 
increase  of  brain-growth  between  four  and  seven ;  (e)  that  of 
puberty ;  (/)  that  of  greatest  proportional  increase  in  general 
body  bulk,  height  and  weight  next  to  the  first  year  of  life, 
between  fourteen  and  seventeen ;  (g)  that  of  the  gradual  and 
steady  maturity  and  solidification  of  the  bones  and  tissues 
generally  between  eighteen  and  twenty-five ;  {/i)  the  period  of 
the  completion  of  the  organism,  structurally  and  functionally, 
sexually,  reproductively  and  mental,  about  twenty-five.  From 
the  point  of  view  of  the  study  of  degeneration-stigmata  Dr  W. 
C.  Krauss  (336,  p.  56)  divides  the  life-history  of  the  individual 
into  three  epochs  :  i.  Pre-natal.  Here  the  evidence  of  de- 
generacy is  teratological,  and  '  the  causes  underlying  degeneracy 
from  a  physical  and  psychical  standpoint  are  in  the  majority  of 
cases  identical  with  those  upon  which  the  science  of  teratology 
rests.  2.  Post-iiataL  Here  the  evidence  is  '  purely  subjective 
or  physical  and  functional ' — deviations  of  the  general  propor- 
tions of  the  body,  peculiar  forms  of  special  parts,  lack  of 
functional  activity  of  the  general  organs  of  the  body,  lack  of 
functional  activity  of  the  special  organs,  developmental  irregu- 
larities, including  habits.  3.  Post-developjuental.  Here  the 
evidence  is  mainly  objective  or  psychical — mental,  moral,  sen- 
sual stigmata. 

Periods  from  the  Point  of  View  of  Physical  Culture. — Dr  E. 
M.  Hartwell,  of  Boston,  studying  man  from  the  point  of  view 
of  physical  training,  and  holding  to  the  general  thesis  that 
'man's  field  of  education  is  the  nervous  system,'  in  relation  to 
periods  of  growth,  maturity  and  decline,  subdivides  the  period 
of  immaturity,  growth  and  evolution  of  maturity  in  the  follow- 
ing fashion  :  I.  Frofn  birth  to  the  close  of  the  eighth  year.  A 
period  of  imitation,  inquisitiveness  and  acquisition,  charac- 
terised by  'an  immense  growth  of  brain,'  and  the  development 
of  the  sensory  organs,  perception  and  memory,    A  period  when 


^6  THE   CHILD 

authority  is  needed,  and  where  only  'easy  and  elementary 
games  belong.'  2.  From  the  ninth  to  about  t/ie  end  of  the  six- 
teenth year.  A  period  characterised  by  growth  in  height  and 
weight,  muscles,  and  motor  co-ordination  ;  the  passage  from 
the  mental  condition  of  childhood  to  the  state  of  youth  and 
manhood  is  marked  by  self-consciousness  and  the  demand  for 
reason.  During  this  period  physical  education  may  be  more 
varied  and  complicated,  but  no  feats  of  extraordinary  skill  must 
be  ventured  upon.  3.  Frotn  the  seventeenth  to  th^  end  of  the 
tiventy  fourth  year.  The  period  of  established  adolescence,  when 
'  the  life  of  the  race  begins  to  be  reflected  in  the  life  of  the 
individual,'  with  distinctive  development  of  character  as  well  as 
of  body  and  mind,  and  'the  co-ordination  of  the  emotions 
with  self-chosen  aims  and  ideals.'  The  brain  and  the  muscles 
are  now  practically  full-grown,  and  reasonable  'great  feats' 
may  be  attempted.  In  an  interesting  essay  on  '  Some  Psychical 
Aspects  of  Muscular  Exercise'  (257),  Dr  Luther  Gulick  of 
Springfield,  Mass.,  who  sees  in  play  a  great  factor  in  human 
gymnastics,  makes  the  following  divisions  in  pre-adult  human 
life:  I.  Babyhood,  from  birth  to  about  the  third  year.  Char- 
acterised by  a  love  of  such  plays  as  rattling  and  mussing  about 
paper,  etc.,  picking,  dropping,  rolling,  pushing,  splashing  sand, 
dirt,  stones  and  the  like.  2.  Early  childlwod,  from  three  to 
about  seven.  Marked  by  love  for  building  with  blocks,  swing- 
ing, climbing,  cutting,  etc.  Also  by  an  interest  in  the  latter 
portion  of  the  period  (by  girls)  in  dolls,  and  an  inquisitive  but 
not  sympathetic  interest  in  '  bugs.'  Before  seven,  also,  '  children 
rarely  play  games  spontaneously.'  3.  Childhood,  from  seven  to 
twelve.  Characterised  by  the  '  height  of  doll-play,'  and  elaborate 
house-keeping,  together  with  the  development  of  competition 
in  boys'  games.  4.  Early  adolescence,  from  twelve  to  seventeen. 
Marked  by  the  development  of  group-games  (ball,  etc.),  and  of  the 
predatory  instincts.  5.  Later  adolescence.  Marked  '  by  the  extra- 
ordinary development  of  group-games  to  thelimitof  adolescence.' 
In  early  childhood  games  and  exercises  seem  to  be  '  indi- 
vidualistic and  non-competitive,  and  for  the  accomplishment 
and  observation  of  objective  results ' ;  in  later  childhood, 
individualistic  and  competitive,  with  active  muscular  correlation 
and  sense-judgment ;  in  adolescence,  socialistic,  and  character- 
ised by  heathen  endurance,  self-control,  loyalty,  trust,  etc.,  and 
by  a  predilection  for  such  savage  occupations  as  hunting,  fish- 
ing, and  the  like. 


THE   PERIODS   OF   CHILDHOOD  JJ 

Very  interesting  is  the  investigation  of  the  periods  or  epochs 
'\\\  the  development  of  the  senses,  of  some  of  which  extended 
studies  have  recently  been  made. 

Periods  in  tlie  I)eveIopme7it  of  tJie  Senses  {Smei/,  Colour). — 
The  most  extensive  study  of  the  sense  of  smell  in  children  is 
Dr  Adriano  Garbini's  '  Evolution  of  the  Olfactive  Sense  in 
Infancy,'  containing  the  results  of  investigations  upon  ten  new- 
born babes  and  415  children  (girls  177,  boys  238)  between 
three  and  six  years  of  age  (234). 

In  the  olfactive  development  of  the  child,  Dr  Garbini 
recognises,  in  the  first  six  years,  six  periods,  which,  with  their 
distinctive  characteristics,  are  : — 

I.  Tactile  Period — the  first  three  hours  of  life.  During  this 
period,  by  reason  of  the  thick  stratum  of  mucus  which  covers 
the  olfactive  substance,  the  child  suffers  anosmia,  and  feels 
only  tactile  stimuli,  which  produce  disagreeable  impressions 
and  are  reacted  to  with  reflex  phenomena. 

II.  Osino-inciilc  Period — from  about  the  third  hour  to  about 
the  fourth  week.  During  this  period  the  respiratory  region  of 
the  new-born  child  is  much  more  sensitive  to  stimuli  of  touch, 
easily  reacting  with  sneezing,  and  he  begins  to  have  osmo- 
tactile  sensations  by  means  of  acutely  odorous  substances 
(osmo-tactile  substances),  but  has  as  yet  no  olfactive  sensations. 

III.  Osmo-gustalive  Period — from  about  the  fourth  week  to 
about  the  fourteenth  month.  During  this  period  the  suckling 
begins  to  have  osmo-gustative  sensations,  perceiving  the  odour 
of  milk,  and  differentiating  the  milk  of  his  own  mother  or 
nurse  from  that  of  other  women,  and  distinguishing  by  their 
odour  alimentary  substances.  From  odorous  substances,  if  they 
are  nauseous,  he  has  reflex  (but  not  odorous)  stimuli  at  the 
stomach  ;  if  they  are  fragrant  or  aromatic,  no  sensation. 

IV.  Olfactive  Period — from  the  fourteenth  month  to  about 
the  third  year  of  Hfe.  During  this  period  the  child  begins  to 
experience  true  olfactive  sensations.  The  first  reactions  to 
odorous  substances  occur  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  month, 
the  nauseous  first,  then  the  rank  odours,  the  aromatic  and  the 
balsamic.  The  mimetic  reactions  commence  to  vary  according 
to  the  odours  after  the  twentieth  month,  and  between  the  nine- 
teenth and  the  twenty-second  month  the  child  begins  to  clearly 
distinguish  odours  from  tastes. 

V.  Continuation  of  the  Fourth  Period — the  third  year  of  life. 
During  this  period  the  mimetic  reactions  of  the  child,  with  the 


7^  THE  CHILD 

perception  of  odours  stimuli,  are  less  accentuated,  and  he  has 
odorous  perceptions  of  different  substances  with  difiTerent  inten- 
sities of  olfactive  stimulus. 

VI.  Fourth,  Fifth  and  Sixth  Years  of  Life. — During  this  period 
the  child  gains  something  in  qualitative  perception  of  odorous 
stimuli,  and  makes  progress  in  correlating  the  olfactive  percep- 
tions, and  the  corresponding  verbal  expressions.  Here  appears 
also  the  ability  to  discern  the  different  intensities  of  the  same 
odour,  but  with  an  average  olfactive  acuteness  very  weak  (6.3) 
as  compared  with  that  of  the  adult  (2.9);  moreover,  the  reaction 
time  can  be  two  and  a  half  times  as  long  as  that  of  adults.  Girls 
seem  to  have  a  slightly  more  acute  sense  of  smell  than  boys. 

In  the  ontogenetic  development  of  the  olfactive  functions, 
according  to  Garbini,  we  have  'a  perfect  repetition  of  the  phylo- 
genetic  evolution,'  and  in  the  child  we  can  note  'in  the  pro- 
gressive order  of  development  of  the  nasal  mucose  membrane  the 
following  stages,  tactile,  osmo-tactile,  osmo-gustative,  olfactive, 
corresponding  to  the  four  phylogenetic  stages  met  with  in  the 
Protozoa,  the  invertebrate  Metazoa,  the  Vertebrates  with  bron- 
chial respiration,  and  the  higher  Vertebrates.'  And  being  late 
to  appear  in  the  animal  series,  the  sense  of  smell  develops  late 
in  the  child,  while  the  general  neglect  of  exercise  and  develop- 
ment of  the  olfactive  sense  in  adults  has  a  strong  (hereditary) 
influence  in  hindering  its  acute  development.  Garbini  strongly 
advises  '  a  gymnastic  of  the  sense  of  smell '  for  children — exer- 
cises, arranged  in  the  order  of  phylogenetic  growth,  which  shall 
improve  and  strengthen  the  child's  perception,  a  useful  and 
justifiable  departure,  he  thinks,  from  the  over-driven  'play- 
system  '  of  the  kindergarten. 

To  the  same  investigator  we  owe  an  excellent  study  of  the 
evolution  of  the  sense  of  colour  in  young  children,  giving  the 
results  of  numerous  and  detailed  experiments  upon  557  Italian 
children  (girls  247,  boys  310)  between  the  ages  of  three  and 
six  years  (233). 

Garbini  points  out  that  too  much  importance  must  not  be 
laid  on  individual  cases  (Preyer,  Binet),  while  the  'recognition  ' 
method  depends  too  much  upon  the  uncertain  factor  of  atten- 
tion and  the  unstable  one  of  memory.  The  author,  therefore, 
used  together  the  silent  method  (matching  the  colour  given  to 
the  child)  and  the  name  method,  upon  a  large  number  of 
children.  He  recognises  in  the  life  of  the  child  as  studied 
by  him  six  periods,  with  their  characteristics,  as  follows  ; — 


THE   TEKIODS   OF   CHILDHOOD  79 

I.  Photodispheric  Period. — From  birth  up  to  about  the  fifth 
day  of  hfe.  The  new-born  child,  by  reason  of  retinal  hyper- 
cesthesia,  bears  light  badly,  and  while  feeling  light,  does  not 
perceive  its  elements,  and  from  luminous  impressions  has  only 
internal  sensations  of  greater  or  less  agreeableness ;  is,  in  fact, 
photophobic — opening  its  eyes  in  the  dark  or  in  shadow. 

II.  PJiotocesthesic  Period. — From  about  the  fifth  to  about 
the  thirtieth  day  of  life.  Commencing,  from  the  fifth  to  the 
seventh  day,  to  be  pleasurably  impressed  by  diffused  light,  the 
infant  becomes  clearly  photophile  between  the  tenth  and  the 
twenty-fifth  day.  From  luminous  impressions  he  has  photo- 
aesthesic  sensations  supplied  by  simple  perceptions  of  light 
and  dark. 

III.  Visive  Period. — From  the  fifth  week  to  about  the 
eighteenth  month  of  life.  The  little  child  enters  upon  the 
development  of  visive  perceptions  properly  so  called.  He 
distinguishes  more  and  more  light  and  dark,  and  begins  to 
differentiate  white  from  black  and  from  grey.  He  commences  to 
have  visive  perceptions,  at  distances  less  than  a  metre,  between 
the  twenty-eighth  and  the  thirty-fifth  day.  He  begins  to  be 
able,  by  the  seventh  week,  to  follow  an  object  slowly  displaced, 
and  by  the  fifth  month  to  follow  others  with  more  rapid 
movements. 

IV.  Chromatic  Period. — From  the  sixteenth  to  the  twenty- 
fourth  month  of  life.  The  child  continues  to  have  more  and 
more  delicate  photoaesthesic  and  visive  perceptions,  and  begins 
to  have  the  first  chromatic  perceptions — red  and  green. 

V.  Contimiation  of  No.  IV. — From  the  second  to  the  third 
year  of  life.  The  child  continues  to  improve  its  perceptions  of 
red  and  green  ;  begins  to  differentiate  yellow  and  has  the  first 
(not  yet  definite)  impressions  of  orange,  blue,  violet.  He  can 
name  quite  correctly  red,  less  exactly  green,  and  badly  the 
other  colours. 

VI.  Contimiation  of  No.  V. — From  the  fourth  to  the  sixth 
year  of  life.  The  child  completes  the  fitting  out  of  the 
chromatic  perceptivity,  becoming  sufficiently  familiar  with  the 
distinction  of  orange,  blue,  violet.  At  the  same  time  he 
becomes  more  and  more  familiar  with  the  correlation  between 
the  colour  perceptions  and  the  corresponding  verbal  expressions, 
not  one  of  which,  however,  can  as  yet  be  said  to  be  perfect 
with  him. 

In   reality,  at  the   end   of  the  sixth  year  the  chromatic 


80  THE   CHILD 

development  is  still  in  its  fust  stages ;  at  that  period  about 
2  per  cent,  of  all  children  are  unable  to  name  any  colour,  and 
only  35  per  cent,  are  able  to  name  all  six  well. 

The  influence  of  sex  upon  the  growth  of  the  colour-sense 
in  early  childhood  is  not  very  great.  In  the  fourth  year  it 
seems  to  be  more  developed  in  boys,  in  the  fifth  and  sixth  years 
in  girls.  In  the  fourth,  fifth  and  sixth  years  the  average  sense 
for  red,  green,  yellow,  orange  is  greater  in  boys,  while  the  sense 
for  blue  and  violet  —  the  last  colours  perceived  in  the  chro- 
matic evolution — is  greater  in  girls.  A  noteworthy  fact  is  that 
'the  order  in  which  the  child  learns  to  connect  the  verbal 
expressions  with  their  corresponding  chromatic  perceptions  is 
identical  with  the  successive  order  of  the  latter,  viz.,  red,  green, 
yellow,  orange,  blue,  violet.'  But  these  two  series  of  pheno- 
mena are  parallel,  not  synchronous,  the  power  to  correlate 
expression  (verbal)  and  perception  coming  about  a  year  later 
than  the  perception  of  the  colours  themselves.  This  lack  of 
synchronism  between  chromatic  perceptions  and  their  verbal 
expressions  is  due,  according  to  Garbini,  to  the  fact  that  the 
latter  '  belong  to  a  psychic  phenomenon  of  a  higher  order  than 
that  of  the  former.' 

Psychic  Periods. — Lessliaft,  who  has  investigated  types  of 
character  and  temperament,  recognises  five  periods  in  human 
life :  (i)  Chaos  period — the  new-born  child ;  (2)  Reflex- 
rational — till  the  use  of  speech,  about  the  second  year ;  (3) 
Concrete  imitation  period — up  to  school  age ;  (4)  Abstract 
i?nitation  period — up  to  about  twenty  years  ;  (5)  Critico-creative 
period — ripe  age  of  man. 

Dr  Paul  Valentin,  from  the  point  of  view  of  developmental 
psychology,  thus  divides  the  life  of  the  child  (658)  :— 

I.  Instinctive  Period — the  first  few  months  of  life.  Psychic 
life  is  affective  only  during  the  first  few  weeks  and  up  to 
the  third  month  (after  which  some  vague  knowledge  begins) 
the  child  is  what  Virchow  terms  '  a  spinal  reflex  being.' 

II.  Ifnitative  Period — up  to  the  sixth  or  seventh  year. 
During  this  epoch  the  suckling  changes  to  the  real  child,  and 
the  young  human  being  slowly  grows  out  of  the  absolute 
domination  of  the  emotional  element. 

III.  Attentive  Period — from  about  seven  years  till  puberty 
occurs.  This  is  the  attentive  epoch  of  intellectual  development 
controlled  by  the  sense  of  personal  effort,  the  most  important 
factor  in  adaptation  to  the  milieu. 


THE    PERIODS   OF   CHILDHOOD  8l 

In  tliese  three  epochs  the  child  from  an  animal  becomes 
a  man  ;  those  who  are  incapable  of  responding  to  this  pliable, 
moulding  process  are  degenerates.  Here  heredity,  unless  it  is 
pathological,  can  be  conquered,  for  it  has  nothing  absolutely 
fatal  about  it. 

Functional  Periods  ;  Social  Epochs. — Dr  Guibert,  accepting 
the  view  that,  in  certain  diseases  of  the  nervous  system,  '  the 
more  recent  acquisitions,  the  higher,  more  perfect  faculties,  are 
the  first  to  disappear,  while  the  last  so  to  do  are  the  more 
rudimentary  functions  of  the  beginnings  of  life,'  recognises  four 
periods  in  childhood  and  youth  as  characterised  by  successive 
developments  of  functional  aptitudes  and  mental  functions, 
which  periods  in  reverse  order  represent  the  course  of  decay  in 
mental  disorders  and  senility  generally.  These  periods  are, 
briefly,  as  follows  (256,  p.  714)  : — 

I.  Period  of  Subjective  and  Instinctive  Life.  —  This  sub- 
jective or  instinctive  life  (conscious  or  not),  which  may  not 
require  the  active  intervention  of  the  cerebral  cortex,  but 
only  that  of  the  medulla,  and  perhaps  of  the  nervous 
ganglia  at  the  base  of  the  encephalon,  is  all  that  exists  in 
the  new-born  infant  and  in  certain  hydrocephalic  individuals — 
a  period  of  purely  reflex  activity.  Here  are  '  incoherent 
manifestations  of  elementary  aptitudes,  without  any  subordina- 
tion or  complex  functional  determination,'  and  subjective  life 
comprises  '  the  gamut  of  sensations,  impressions,  instinctive 
needs,  automatic  unco-ordinated  movements,  incompletely  and 
imperfectly  co-ordinated  movements  determined  by  needs  to 
be  satisfied,  emotions  to  be  manifested.'  The  manifestations 
of  this  period  are  developed  by  '  progressive  differentiation 
and  adaptation,'  and  the  subjective  life  is  not  suppressed  by 
the  superposition  of  the  functional  aptitudes  of  succeeding 
periods,  but  'constitutes  the  basis  and  foundation  without 
which  such  functions  could  neither  arise  nor  be  developed.' 
Among  the  more  or  less  abnormal  or  pathological  manifesta- 
tions of  the  subjective  life  are  dreaming,  hallucination,  delirium, 
etc.,  which  under  certain  circumstances  remain  to  disturb  pro- 
foundly the  regular  phenomena  of  objective,  social  and 
professional  life.  2.  Period  of  Objective  Life.  Beginning 
generally  before  the  sixth  month  of  the  child's  existence. 
Greater  utilisation  of  the  brain  is  indicated  here  by  the 
aptitudes  which  go  to  make  up  the  objective  life  of  the  period. 
Automatic  or  instinctive  exteriorisation  (afterwards  conscious 


82  THE   CHILD 

and  effective) ;  automatic  or  instinctive  recognition  (then 
effective  and  conscious) ;  prehension  (afterwards  active) ; 
walking  (afterwards  active  and  certain) ;  natural  language  and 
family  life,  the  necessary  preface  of  the  succeeding  period. 
The  majority  of  the  so-called  higher  animals  have  had  their 
mental  evolution  arrested  at  this  period,  and  at  its  beginning 
we  find  also  arrested  the  idiots  who  are  termed  automatic,  who, 
unable  to  adapt  themselves  to  savage  or  semi-savage  life,  much 
less  to  civilised  life,  seem  to  belong  to  the  human  race  only 
with  the  body,  not  the  brain.  3.  Period  of  Social  Life.  This 
period  is  marked  by  the  instinctive  imitation  which  gives  birth 
to  morals,  customs  ;  the  echolalia,  which,  in  the  child,  precedes 
concrete  language ;  understood  language,  spoken  language ; 
more  vigilant  and  attentive  aptitude  for  exteriorisation 
(social),  games,  dance,  group-walking,  gymnastics,  hunting, 
fishing,  agriculture,  breeding,  construction  of  huts,  com- 
bined efforts  of  several  individuals  ;  foresight  and  collective 
experience  ;  aptitude  for  school  life,  for  attention,  for  voluntary 
intellectual  efforts,  reading,  elementary  writing;  aptitude  for 
recognising  empiric  genera  and  species  transmitted  by 
language;  the  aptitude  (with  the  provision  of  tools,  clothing, 
food,  weapons)  for  tribal,  savage  or  semi-savage  life — the  result 
of  preceding  functional  aptitudes  come  to  their  habitual 
development.  The  apes  (especially  the  anthropomorphic),  by 
virtue  of  their  instinct  of  imitation,  and  the  more  intelligent  of 
the  microcephalic  idiots  (who  reach  the  chatter  of  infants)  may 
be  said  to  have  advanced  a  little  into  this  period,  while 
imbeciles,  the  majority  of  savage  and  half-savage  men,  together 
with  not  a  few  men  living  in  the  midst  of  civilisation,  are 
arrested  in  their  mental  development  in  this  third  period, 
remaining  refractory  to  the  mass  of  abstract  ideas,  the  in- 
telligence and  culture  of  the  next  epoch.  4.  Period  of  Pro- 
fessional and  Scientific  Life.  The  functional  aptitudes  of  this 
period,  methodic  exteriorisation,  attention,  professional  and 
scientific  observation;  recognition,  determination  of  varieties, 
species,  genera,  natural  families  scientifically  or  empirically 
established  ;  aptitude  for  natural  classifications,  scientific  and 
professional  nomenclatures  and  abstractions ;  aptitude  for 
civilised  life,  liberal  professions,  abstract,  intellectual  life,  and, 
a  fortiori,  aptitude  for  intelligent  apprenticeship,  for  pro- 
fessional, free,  provident,  perfectible  exercise. 

In   all  the   period    of  progress    one   must  suppose    '  the 


THE   PERIODS   OF   CHILDHOOD  83 

gradual  intervention  of  new  centres,  more  and  more  specialised, 
which,  from  the  state  of  inertia  and  functional  torpor  in  which 
they  are  still  plunged  at  birth,  must  submit  to  the  action  of 
repeated  and  concordant  excitations,  passing  by  the  progressive 
evolution  of  their  constituent  elements  to  an  active  state.' 

A  good  deal  of  valuable  reasoning  along  lines  not  vastly 
dissimilar  may  be  found  in  Tarde,  Baldwin,  Giddings  and 
other  writers  who  have  taken  up  the  consideration  of  imitation, 
and  the  social  development  of  the  individual  and  the  race. 
Inspired  by  Baldwin,  in  some  respects,  is  the  investigation 
of  the  'institutional  activities  '  of  American  children  by  Mr  H. 
D.  Sheldon,  who  finds  that  the  years  of  childhood  from  four  to 
fourteen  contain  two  distinctly  marked  periods.  i.  Period  of 
itnitation.  From  four  to  ten.  Characterised  by  '  free  spon- 
taneous imitation  of  every  form  of  adult  institution,'  the  child 
responding  easily  and  sympathetically  to  his  environment. 
Family,  store,  church,  school,  etc.,  are  all,  sometimes  naively, 
sometimes  very  ingeniously,  imitated.  2.  Period  of  iuve/ifion. 
From  ten  to  fourteen.  Characterised  by  '  less  imitation  and 
play,  and  more  invention  and  following  of  instinct.'  Among 
boys  there  is  '  a  tendency  to  form  social  units  characteristic 
of  lower  stages  of  civilisation  ' — predatory  organisation,  'street 
gangs,'  with  imitation  ceremonies  sometimes  of  savage  sort, 
discipline,  espj-it  de  corps,  etc.,  corresponding  (588). 

Stages  in  tJie  Develop7nent  of  the  Ifnagi/iatio7i.  —  The 
'  Evolution  of  the  Imagination '  has  been  discussed  by  Dr  V, 
Giuffrida-Ruggeri  (245)  upon  the  basis  of  the  most  recent 
studies  and  researches  of  Binet,  Speranski,  Thomas,  Paulhan, 
Dugas,  Ribot,  Philippe,  Baldwin,  Fouillee,  Ambrosi,  etc. 
Adopting  Binet's  definition  of  imagination  as  '  the  faculty  of 
creating  groups  of  images  which  do  not  correspond  to  any 
external  reality,'  the  author  outlines  the  story  of  its  develop- 
ment thus  : — 

I.  Simply  Objective  Stage.  —  Exemplified  in  the  early 
Greek  legends,  where  metamorphosis  (corresponding  to  the 
real  mechanism  of  reasoning)  constitutes  almost  all  the 
mechanism,  illustrating  the  fact  that  even  the  brilliant  imagina- 
tion of  this  wonderful  people,  no  less  than  other  mental 
products,  can  be  led  back  to  a  process  of  reasoning;  and  in 
'  the  objective  imagination  of  children,  improperly  called 
"  creative,"  since  it  creates  nothing,  but  transforms,  through  the 
wonted  mechanism,  animating  sticks,  changing  leaves  of  trees 

7 


84  THE   CHILD 

into  dishes,'  elc.  Here  also  'the  collective  mind  reflects  the 
individual  mind  by  magnifying  it — the  luxuriating  cycle  of 
Greek  legends,  true  sjiring  of  voluntary  illusions,  corresponds 
to  what  sleep  is  in  the  individual,  the  true  type  of  meta- 
morphosis-hallucinations,' and  to  the  phenomena  of  waking 
sleep,  reverie,  etc.  The  metamorphosis  of  the  early  Greek 
legends  'is  not  merely  a  transition  from  the  known  to  the 
unknown,  not  merely  the  extension  of  an  anterior  knowledge, 
but  is  also  a  classification,  the  first  classification,  perhaps,  ever 
made  in  Greece.  Transformation  into  animals  generally 
indicates  deterioration,  as  does  metamorphosis  into  rocks ; 
while  transformation  into  plants  (flowers,  particularly)  is  almost 
a  passage  into  a  better  life;  transformation  into  streams  or 
fountains  seems  of  ambiguous  value,  and  metamorphosis  into 
stars  is  always  reserved  for  the  most  markedly  deserving  and 
the  most  brilliant  glories.'  Although  the  '  master  road '  of  Greek 
imagination  is  metamorphosis,  the  idea  of  contrast  plays  its 
role  also,  and  that  factor,  so  common  in  childhood,  which 
Baldwin  has  denominated  '  suggestion  by  contradiction.' 

11.  Schematic  Stage. — -Although  the  imagination,  'in  its 
simple  form  is  a  logical  conclusion,  it  also  forms  part  of  a 
delirium,  the  evolution  and  complication  of  whose  mechanism 
is  wonderfully  aided  by  schematic  figures  (or  groups  of  figures) 
or  images — a  schematic  figure  ("eyes  of  fire,"  "words  of  fire," 
etc.)  is  a  figure  of  manifold  attributes,  not  confined  merely  to 
one  or  two  resemblances.'  Our  whole  intellectual  life,  and  the 
intellectual  life  of  peoples  as  well,  are  full  of  these  schematic 
figures,  resumes  of  a  long  series  of  experiences.  The  schematic 
stage  is  chiefly  important  in  art,  '  which,  objectively  considered, 
reaches  its  relative  perfection  when  the  oscillations  dependent 
upon  the  diverse  individual  conceptions  are  reduced  to  a 
minimum.'  The  process  of  reduction  by  which  the  schematic 
figure  is  reached  appears  in  PhiHppe's  experiments  on  the  trans- 
formation of  mental  images,  in  which  the  unconscious  com- 
parison of  a  figure  (retraced  after  some  length  of  time)  with 
pre-existing  images,  results  in  the  elimination  of  a  number  of 
the  perceptions  which  were  part  of  the  old  design,  and  we  have 
at  last  a  very  simple  and  clearly-defined  scheme.  Just  as  a 
child  prefers  a  wax  doll  to  a  marble  doll,  so  we  are  less  pleased 
with  the  best  made  figure  in  wax  than  with  a  statue  of  marble, 
not  (as  Speranski  thinks)  by  reason  of  its  greater  likeness  to 
reality,  but  on  account  of  the  clash  with  the  pre-existing  plastic 


THE   TERIODS   OF   CHILDHOOD  85 

scheme.  This  schematic  stage  of  the  imagination  is  revealed 
in  very  many  Greek  legends  and  myths  (the  banquet  of  Atreus, 
Pelops,  Areas  and  Tereus ;  the  challenge  of  Hippodamia  and 
Atalanta ;  the  calumny  of  Hippolytus,  Bellerophon,  Phryxus, 
etc.),  and  has  analogies  in  the  gest  of  the  wandering  knight  of 
the  xMiddle  Ages.  It  is  of  greatest  importance  in  literary  com- 
positions, novels,  etc. 

III.  Symbolic  Stage. — When,  in  the  process  of  reduction  of 
its  attributes  undergone  by  an  image  (or  a  group  of  im.ages),  it 
is  removed  from  the  sphere  of  concrete  facts  into  that  of 
abstract,  we  have  the  foundation  of  a  symbol ;  wings,  e.g., 
come  to  signify  not  alone  speed,  but  desire,  pleasure,  curiosity, 
daring,  genius,  thought,  time,  etc.  In  the  poems  of  Goethe 
and  the  music  of  Wagner,  the  dramas  of  Ibsen  and  the  pictures 
of  the  symbolists,  groups  (more  or  less  complex)  of  figures 
correspond  to  as  many  symbols.  Examples  of  products  of  the 
imagination  in  the  symbolic  stage  are  also  the  ancient  fables 
and  the  enigmas  of  Pythagoras,  but  not  the  personifications  of 
the  old  myths,  for  animism  is  something  else  than  the  result  of 
abstraction.  Experimental  proofs  of  the  mechanism  of  the 
symbolic  stage  of  the  imagination  are  revealed  by  hypnotism, 
the  symbolism  developed,  e.g..,  from  the  placing  of  the  hands  to 
suggest  the  scheme  of  prayer.  An  expression  (a  line  of  Racine, 
e.g.)  may  be  schematic  or  symbolic,  ugly  or  beautiful,  according 
as  the  reader's  imagination  is  in  the  schematic  stage  (with  con- 
crete images)  or  in  the  symbolic  stage  (with  abstract  elements). 
As  the  concrete  yields  more  and  more  to  the  abstract,  the 
brilliant  metaphors  gradually  become  more  and  more  empty 
formulae,  following  the  general  law  of  senility,  the  words  losing 
first  a  portion  then  all  of  their  significance. 

The  evolution  of  the  imagination  is  nowhere,  however, 
better  exhibited,  the  author  thinks,  than  in  the  story  of  the 
rise,  development  and  decadence  of  the  religious  sentiment : 
'  In  the  great  religions  of  classic  antiquity,  when  the  external 
world  was  reflected  in  the  yet  infantile  mind  of  man,  as  in  a 
mirror  we  see  the  imagination  in  its  splendid  phantasmagoric 
objective  phase.  In  the  Middle  Ages,  when  the  religious  senti- 
ment reached  its  chief  paroxysm,  the  imagination  became 
schematic.  Finally,  when  religion  is  on  the  way  to  become 
one  of  the  many  social  conveniences,  the  imagination  turns 
symbolical.' 

Spencer's  distinction  between  the  '  reproductive '  and  the 


86  THE   CHILD 

'constructive'  imagination,  a  distinction  adopted  by  many 
other  psychologists — as  examples  of  '  reproductive '  imagination, 
have  been  cited,  the  infant's  recognition  of  the  maternal  breast, 
its  sudden  turning  at  hearing  a  bird  sing,  its  brightening  up 
when  the  nurse  puts  on  a  walking  dress,  the  fact  of  saying 
'  papa '  at  the  sight  of  any  man — is  rejected  by  Dr  Giuffrida- 
Ruggeri,  these  things  not  differing  sufficiently  from  the  ordinary 
forms  of  association  to  deserve  a  separate  name,  or  from 
memory.  Fouillee,  indeed,  holds  that  'reproductive  imagina- 
tion is  not  distinguished  from  memory.'  Wundt's  distinction 
of  '  active  '  and  '  passive '  imagination  he  deems  preferable.  At 
the  basis  of  the  process  of  reduction  involved  in  the  evolution 
of  the  imagination  lies  the  '  law  of  least  effort,'  to  which  Ferrero, 
in  his  study  of  the  psychology  of  symbolism,  has  attached  so 
much  importance  and  so  well  illustrated,  and  imagination  itself 
belongs  to  the  second — epoch  of  objective  reference — sub- 
division of  mental  development  according  to  Baldwin,  and 
'  its  appearance  coincides  with  the  appearance  of  the  diffuse, 
irregular,  aimless,  and  powerfully  pleasant  or  painful  move- 
ments originating  in  the  superabundance  of  nervous  tonality, 
and  the  luxuriousness  of  vital  energy,  which  invades  the  being 
free  from  the  fearful  contemplation  of  the  ego  so  weak  in 
respect  to  the  environment.  Indeed,  the  imagination,  itself,  at 
this  stage,  an  inevitable  reaction  to  the  stimuli  of  the  environ- 
ment, is  one  form  of  such  movements.' 

In  connection  with  the  part  played  in  the  schematic 
imagination  by  the  data  of  the  eye  and  ear,  in  which  the 
representative  element  dominates  all  images,  the  author  re- 
marks that  '  the  imagination  of  the  deaf-mute  never  passes  the 
schematic  stage,'  his  imaginative  patrimony  being,  probably, 
more  deficient  than  that  of  the  born-blind. 

Ribot  divides  the  history  of  the  evolution  of  general  ideas 
in  the  individual  and  the  race  into  the  following  stages:  i. 
Pre-lingual.  Seen  in  animals,  children,  deaf-mutes.  2.  Word- 
idea.  Seen  in  primitive  races  of  man — here  the  ideas  are 
accompanied  by  words,  and  an  increasingly  important  7-dle 
attaches  to  language.  3.  Classifactory  and  scientific.  In  this 
stage  occurs  the  complete  substitution  of  words  for  ideas  (535). 

Religioiis  Periods  of  Childhood. — Dr  Oscar  Chrisman,  in  his 
essay  on  'Religious  Periods  of  Child-Growth'  (in),  divides 
child-life  into  five  periods:  (i)  Pre-natal  (from  conception  to 
birth) ;  (2)  Infancy  (from  birth  to  the  obtaining  of  temporary 


The  periods  of  childhood  87 

teeth,  at  about  2?t  years  of  age) ;  (3)  Childhood  (from  the 
obtainuig  of  temporary  teeth  to  the  obtaining  of  permanent 
teeth  at  about  10  years  of  age);  (4)  Pubescence  (from  the 
gaining  of  permanent  teeth  to  '  the  time  of  the  initial  develop- 
ment of  the  function  of  reproduction,  in  girls  at  about  the  age 
of  12-13  years,  in  boys  15-16  years);'  (5)  Adolescence  (from  the 
initial  development  to  the  attainment  of  the  full  perfection  of 
the  reproductive  energy  at  about  25  years  of  age). 

The  stages  of  growth,  suggested  by  Dr  E.  D.  Starbuck,  who 
has  investigated  the  data  of  conversion  and  the  psychological 
aspects  of  religion,  are  (611,  p.  124):  'Childhood,  the  seed- 
time, up  to  twelve  or  thirteen  ;  the  beginning  of  youth,  the 
time  of  germination,  in  which  new  life  comes  in  a  great  wave 
at  fourteen  or  fifteen,  and  its  two  wavelets,  just  before  and 
just  after  the  large  one;  next,  youth,  the  growing  time,  in 
which  the  life  forces  are  being  sifted,  readjusted  and  combined ; 
by  twenty-four  and  twenty-five  the  person  has  worked  out  a 
point  of  view,  an  individual  insight,  and  become  a  positive 
factor  in  the  religious  life  of  the  world.  Each  stage  should  be 
a  preparation  for  the  next,  so  that  the  person  may  merge 
naturally  and  evenly  into  a  strong,  beautiful,  spiritual  manhood 
or  womanhood.'  Moreover,  according  to  Dr  Starbuck  (610, 
p.  272),  'the  years  of  greatest  frequency  of  conversions  corre- 
spond with  periods  of  greatest  bodily  growth  for  both  males 
and  females,'  and  there  is  'a  correspondence  between  the 
periods  of  most  frequent  conversions  and  puberty  in  both 
sexes.' 

Periods  oj  Growth  of  the  Historic  Sense, — From  a  study 
of  the  '  historic  sense  among  children,'  Mrs  Mary  S.  Barnes 
(36,  p.  92)  finds  indications  of  three  periods  of  historical 
interest  and  activity  in  the  young  human  being,  the  '  historical 
sense '  appearing  at  least  as  early  as  seven.  These  epochs 
are  :  (i)  From  seven  or  eight  to  about  twelve  or  thirteen— \he. 
period  of  '  striking  biographies  and  events.'  The  biographies, 
themselves  the  basis  of  chronology,  '  should  be  chosen  from 
the  field  of  action  and  interest  allied  to  children's  lives,'  in 
other  words,  they  should  he  taken  from  '  the  personal,  military 
and  cultural  aspects  of  history,  and  scarcely  at  all  from  the 
political  or  intellectual  life.'  (2)  F)-07n  fourteen  or  fifteen  up  to 
about  entrance  to  college,  or  after — the  period  of  interest  in  '  the 
statesman,  thinkers,  poets,  as  successors  to  the  explorers  and 
fiighters   of  the  earlier   period ' ;  of  interest  in,  and   thought 


88  THE  CHILD 

about,  '  the  concrete  embodiments  of  a  time,  its  documents, 
monuments,  men  and  books  ' ;  of  the  beginning  of  reading 
between  the  lines,  of  criticism,  etc.  (3)  College  years — '  the 
age  of  monographic  special  study  ' ;  the  time  when  one  needs 
to  and  can  make  '  the  collection,  comparison,  criticism  of 
sources  themselves.' 

Periods  of  Laiv  Recognition.— The  investigations  of  Pro- 
fessor Earl  Barnes  and  Miss  Estelle  M.  Darrah  (145,  p.  258) 
concerning  *  children's  attitude  toward  law,'  seem  to  make 
clear  the  existence  of  two  very  diverse  epochs  during  the 
period  from  seven  years  onward,  as  follows  (the  children  in 
question  are  American,  largely  Californian) :  i.  From  six  or 
seven  to  from  ten  to  t7uelve—the  period  of  law-ignoring ;  of 
little  regard,  or  appreciation  for  general  laws  and  regulations  ; 
of  arbitrary  and  severe  reactions  against  the  misdoings  o^ 
others,  of  revenge-punishment,  and  atonement  by  suffering  ; 
of  obedience  to  personal  authority,  not  to  rule  or  law ;  the 
period  of  outraged  feelings  and  vague  ideas.  2.  From  about 
twelve  (the  change  may  begin  at  ten,  and  is  more  rapid 
between  twelve  and  thirteen)  to  about  sixteen — after  this  the 
tendencies  of  the  period  increase  with  the  years.  The  period 
of  law  recognition  (personal  authority  is  replaced  by  obedience 
to  rule  and  law) ;  of  self-knowledge  of  feelings,  of  moderation 
in  punishment,  and  recognition  to  some  extent  of  the  inten- 
tions of  the  offender.  There  is,  even  here,  however,  '  little 
recognition  of  a  corrective  aim  in  punishment,'  traces  of  such 
appearing  *  only  in  the  later  years,  and  then  in  comparatively 
few  cases.'  Up  to  ten  years  of  age,  at  least,  the  school-children 
should  be  governed  by  personal  authority  and  not  by  law, 
rule  and  regulation,  '  each  infraction  of  the  law  of  right 
and  each  act  of  disobedience  being  treated  on  its  individual 
merits.' 

Migratory  and  Truant  Periods. — Dr  L.  W.  Kline,  who  has 
investigated  the  phenomena  of  truancy,  migration,  running 
away,  etc.,  in  childhood,  finds  that  there  are  three  periods, 
'  each  differentiated  from  the  other  by  certain  characteristics, 
impulses  and  activities'  (328,  p.  395).  These  periods  are  as 
follows  : — 

I.  From  tJie  Time  of  being  able  to  Walk  easily  to  about  the 
Third  or  Fourth  Year. — This  period,  which  is  'common  to  all 
children,  regardless  of  home  life  or  physical  conditions,'  is 
'  characterised  by  aimlessness,  openness  and  unconsciousness 


The  periods  of  childhood  89 

of  danger  or  any  wrong,'  while  '  during  their  little  escapade 
some  very  primitive,  as  well  as  semi-barbaric,  practices  crop 
out,  e.g.,  chasing  and  capturing  animals,  begging,  taking 
things  that  please  their  fancy,' etc.  Fifty  cases  of  this  period 
were  studied. 

2.  J^rom  the  Fourth  to  the  Seventh  Year  inclusive. — This 
period,  in  which  the  child's  likes  and  dislikes  appear,  and 
he  is  influenced  by  loneliness  at  home,  lack  of  toys,  and  other 
amusements,  by  the  abuse  or  cruelty  and  neglect  of  parents 
(though  firm  and  proper  home  treatment  will  break  the 
runaway  habit)  is  marked  by  '  a  dominating  love  for  play  and 
companions,  and  outdoor  life.'  This  is  the  'period  of 
curiosity,  the  age  of  attempts,  and  a  sort  of  diffused  universal 
interest  for  nature  and  man.'  At  this  time  the  child  is 
attracted  by  all  things,  'seeks  the  acquaintance  of  any  and 
everybody,  enjoys  new  sights  and  the  unexpected,  likes  to  do 
new  things  as  a  test  of  his  courage,  and  to  make  explorations 
into  new  vicinities.'  Toward  the  close  of  this  period  and  the 
beginning  of  the  next  (although  '  an  occasional  truant  is  born 
in  the  sixth  or  seventh  year ')  many  children  give  up  the  habit 
altogether,  for  now  '  focussing  down  of  interests,  a  growing 
love  for  parents,  attachment  to  certain  groups  of  playmates, 
fondness  for  school-work  and  teacher,  are  all  forces  overcoming 
and  destroying  this  powerful  relic  of  primitive  man.'  Eighty 
cases  of  this  period  were  studied. 

3.  From  the  Eighth  to  the  Tivelfth  Year  inclusive. — At  this 
time  '  the  child  frequently  abandons  the  habit  altogether,  due 
to  the  influence  and  integrity  of  the  home,  or  he  begins  it  in 
serious  form  for  the  first  time  in  life,  due  to  incompetent 
parents  and  an  unattractive  home,  or  to  the  impulse  itself 
which  dominates  all  his  life  activities,  unfitting  him  to  wrestle 
with  fortune  and  destroying  the  desire  to  do  so.'  During  this 
period  the  child  is  influenced  by  his  impulsiveness,  lack  of  per- 
sistence, impatience  of  restraint,  carelessness  of  person,  indiffer- 
ence towards  property,  lack  of  sympathy  with  society  and  its 
movements,  etc.  In  a  word,  '  he  stands  out  like  an  outcrop 
of  an  older  formation,  pointing  the  genetic  psychologist  back 
to  the  probable  origin  of  the  migrating  instinct.'  One  hundred 
and  twenty  cases  of  this  period  were  studied. 

Criminological  Periods  of  Childhood. — From  the  standpoint 
of  penology  Dr  Appelius,  omitting  the  early  years  of  infancy, 
where  parental  control  and  restraint  of  incipient  crime  suffice, 


90  THE  CHILD 

recognises  three  epochs  in  the  life  of  the  immature  man  :  (a) 
from  the  sixth  to  the  twelfth  year  ;  {/>)  from  the  twelfth  to  the 
sixteenth  year ;  (c)  from  the  sixteenth  to  the  close  of  the 
eighteenth  year  (14,  p.  88).  From  the  first  two  periods  the 
usual  crime-punishments  should  be  rigorously  excluded,  but 
in  the  last  the  criminal  actions  of  youths  stand  in  very  close 
relations  to  those  of  adults.  No  sharply-marked  boundary 
can  be  noted  between  childhood  and  youth,  but  in  general 
the  frontier  lies  about  the  twelfth  year,  when  sexual  maturity 
(with  its  developmental  changes)  begins.  Judicial  punishment 
of  children  is  not  to  be  thought  of,  and  in  the  period  between 
the  ages  of  twelve  and  sixteen,  when  criminal  offences  are 
largely  the  reflex  of  individual  development,  not  so  much 
the  product  of  the  general  impulse  of  youth,  which  comes 
somewhat  later,  removal  from  bad  parental  and  family  environ- 
ment, with  transference  to  an  educational  and  reformatory 
institution  controlled  by  the  State.  For  youthful  criminals 
between  sixteen  and  eighteen,  imprisonment,  reprimand, 
school-discipline,  fine,  are  among  the  forms  of  punishment 
allowable,  but  not  the  modern  prison -punishments.  Dr 
AppeHus  thinks  that  the  limit  for  the  beginning  of  punishment 
should  be  raised  to  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  year,  and  the 
end  of  the  disposition  of  neglected  children  be  made  the  end 
of  the  sixteenth  year.  Individuals  under  fourteen  years  of 
age  lack,  in  most  cases,  moral  maturity,  and  a  crime-punish- 
ment can  hardly  with  justice  be  meted  out  to  them.  This 
moral  maturity  is  usually  present  in  individuals  between 
fourteen  and  sixteen ;  in  individuals  over  sixteen  years  of 
age,  general  responsibility  may  be  assumed,  as  well  as  the 
presence  of  moral  maturity. 

Dr  Aschrott,  the  keynote  of  whose  argument  lies  in  the 
declaration  'a  child  who  is  still  going  to  school  does  not 
belong  in  prison'  (15,  p.  22),  is  also  strongly  in  favour  of  the 
fourteenth  year  limit.  At  least  the  close  of  school-childhood 
ought  to  precede  the  beginning  of  criminal  youth  and  man- 
hood. The  same  recommendation  was  made  by  the  committee 
of  the  International  Criminological  Congress  at  ITalle  in  1891, 
who  took  the  view  that  '  no  individual  who  has  not  yet 
completed  his  or  her  fourteenth  year  should  be  judicially 
punished  for  the  commission  of  a  punishable  action,  State- 
superintended  education  being  here  the  remedy  to  be  pursued  ' 
(14,  p.  201).     The  views  of  the  committee  were  adopted  by 


THE   PERIODS   OF   CHILDHOOD  Ql 

the  Conference  held  in  Berlin  in  December  1 891,  and  have 
received  general  adhesion  in  Germany  (14,  p.  233). 

Periods  of  Vocal  Evolution. — Nowhere  more,  perhaps,  do 
the  divisions  and  epochs  appear  to  better  (or  to  worse) 
advantage  than  in  the  evolution  of  the  voice  and  speech  of 
the  child.  The  evolution  of  the  voice  in  children  up  to  the 
age  of  six  has  been  carefully  studied  by  Dr  Adriano  Garbini, 
who  sums  up  the  result  of  his  researches  as  follows  (232) : — 

I.  New-borfi  Child. — First  cries  (reflex),  without  individual 
tone;  height . between /a^  and  fa^,  intensity  weak,  duration 
very  brief  (about  60  times  per  minute).  II.  First  two  months. 
— Inarticulate  cries  ;  appearance  of  the  voice.  Tone  nasal 
and  common  to  all ;  height  between  /a^  and  fa^,  intensity 
strong,  duration  less  brief  (about  40  times  per  minute).  III. 
Erom  the  second  to  the  eighth  month. — Appearance  of  the  artic- 
ulate voice.  Tone  not  yet  individualised,  intensity  stronger, 
height  between  do"^  z.nd^  <^(?^  duration  longer  (about  27  times 
per  minute).  IV.  From  the  eighth  to  the  eighteenth  month. — 
Rapid  increase  in  the  variety  of  sound.  Appearance  of 
modulation,  individual  tone,  intensity  weaker,  height  between 
do""  and  do^.  V.  Frotn  the  eighteenth  to  the  twenty-fourth  montL — 
Larynx  more  consolidated,  more  definite  sonorous  qualities, 
height  less,  uncertain  reproduction  of  some  notes.  Prattle  sung 
between  si""  and  w/l  VI.  From  two  to  three  years. — Entrance 
into  the  field  of  vocal  extension,  with  possible  limits  re^-la^. 
Correct  intonation  of  ?///^  and/a\  First  differentiation  of  the 
two  registers.  Diminution  in  the  intensity  of  cries,  increase 
in  that  of  the  singing  voice.  The  tone  becomes  more  and  more 
individualised,  and  the  first  sexual  difference  appears.  Trans- 
formation of  the  singing  prattle  into  rhythmic  and  remotely 
melodic  phrases.  Difficult  and  inexact  repetition  of  some 
musical  phrases.  VII.  From  three  to  six  years. — Well-marked 
vocal  extension,  with  possible  limits  la-re''-,  sol-mi'^.  Physio- 
logical extension  of  four  tones  for  girls  and  five  for  boys. 
Perfect  distinction  between  the  two  registers  and  the  Woix  de 
passage  ' ;  chest-voice  with  potential  maximum  at  /rt^  in  girls, 
mi^  in  boys,  head-voice  with  potential  maximum  at  si"^  for  both 
sexes,  except  between  three  and  four  years,  when  it  is  at  la^ — • 
the  '  voix  de  passage  '  varying  in  girls  about  two  notes  {sol^,  la^), 
and  in  boys  about  three  (/«\  sol\  hi^).  Increasing  intensity  of 
the  singing  voice,  at  the  maximum  in  the  sharps,  weak  in  the 
bass.     Tone   inherent   in   age   and   sex  as  with   children   of 


92  THE   CHILD 

between  two  and  three  years  of  age,  Individual  tone  more 
and  more  accentuated — general  type  of  tone,  '  chiaro,'  not  too 
harmonic.  Exact  repetition  of  songs  and  melodies.  Musical 
ear  well  developed  for  enharmonic  intonation. 

Linguistic  Sensory-Motor  Feriods.  —  Berthold  Sigismund, 
physician,  naturalist,  teacher  and  poet,  in  1856,  published, 
under  the  title  Child  and  World  (600),  a  genial  and  sug- 
gestive account  of  the  growth  and  development  of  his  own 
little  boy.  Before  he  began  to  write  he  was  evidently  well 
acquainted  with  the  folk-lore  and  the  folk-observation  of  child- 
hood, and  it  is  to  him  that  we  owe  the  introduction  into  the 
literature  of  child-study  of  the  term  'stupid  quarter'  —  das 
dumme  Vierteljahr  (compare  the  Latin  infans) — by  which  the 
Thuringian  peasants  designated  the  first  three  months  of 
human  existence.  A  keen  observer  of  child-endeavour  and 
actual  physical  and  intellectual  progress,  Sigismund,  noting 
the  chief  developmental  facts  involved,  assigned  to  the  child 
in  the  various  stages  of  its  growth  these  expressive  names 
(the  others  of  the  list  being  formed  by  analogy  with  the  first) : 
I.  Sdug/ing  {^  ?,uck\'mg'),  the  period  of  the  first  three  months, 
when  the  child  is  seemingly  stupid,  and,  as  it  were,  part  of  the 
mother  still.  2.  Ldchling  ('little  smiler'),  the  period  in  which 
the  development  of  Virgil's  risu  cognoscere  matrem  takes  place 
(the  smile,  Sigismund  thought,  began  between  the  seventh  and 
the  tenth  week).  3.  Sehling  ('  little  seer ' ),  the  period  in  which 
the  organ  of  sight  comes  more  or  less  under  control,  and  the 
'  wise  look '  of  the  child  really  means  something.  4.  Greifling 
('little  gripper'),  the  period  in  which  gripping  and  grasping  (the 
first  step,  as  language — German,  begreifen;  Latin,  apprehendere — 
tells  us,  towards  comprehension),  and  the  use  of  the  hand  as  a 
human  organ  develop.  5.  Laiifling  ('  little  walker '),  the  period 
(earlier  the  child  \s  Kriec/iling,  'little  creeper')  in  which  the 
child  has  learned  to  stand  freely  and  to  walk  (according  to 
Sigismund,  the  acquisition  of  the  power  to  walk  takes  place 
between  the  end  of  the  first  year  and  the  end  of  the  first 
quarter  of  the  second  year).  6.  Sp7'echling  ('little  speaker'), 
the  period  when  the  child  has  begun  to  use  the  most  human 
of  all  man's  accomplishments,  and  ceases  to  be,  in  the 
original  Latin  sense  of  the  term,  an  infant,  becoming  speaking 
man. 

Another  classification  of  the  epochs  of  childhood  suggested 
by  Sigismund  is — From  birtli  to  the  first  smile ;  from  smiling 


THE   PERIODS   OF   CHILDHOOD  93 

to  sitting  ;  from  sitting  to  walking  ;  from  wallving  to  speaking  ; 
from  word  to  sentence. 

Sigismund's  divisions  of  the  periods  of  childhood  have  been 
practically  adopted  by  Fritz  Schultze  in  his  evolutionistic  study 
of  '  The  Child's  Language '  '581). 

Liiigiiis/ic  Periods. — Kussmaul  recognises  three  periods  or 
stages  of  development  in  the  articulation  of  the  child  :  I.  The 
period  of  primitive  sounds — sounds  of  a  'wild,'  reflex  sort,  in  all 
sorts  of  loose  and  chance  successions  and  combinations ;  some 
the  regular  sounds  of  the  alphabet,  other  of  a  much  more  difficult 
sort,  reminding  one  of  certain  sounds  in  modern  folk-speech  and 
the  tongues  of  savage  peoples  (^,  y^//,  //,  dsi,  qr,  etc.).  These 
sounds  are  the  product  of  the  muscle-instinct  of  the  child,  like 
its  hand-clapping,  its  leg-kicking  and  other  seemingly  aimless 
exertions.  There  is  a  joyance  of  babbling  fully  equal  to  any 
joyance  of  movement  the  infant  can  feel.  II.  The  i?/iitative 
period,  beginning  in  some  children  before  the  end  of  the  first 
year,  in  others  not  clearly  noticeable  till  well  on  into  the  second 
year,  or  even  later.  Here  the  language  of  the  child's  environ- 
ment makes  its  influence  felt,  and  the  'wildness'  of  its  former 
artless  babble  is  shaped  (when  the  child  is  capable  of  listening 
and  distinguishing  tones)  into  something  like  the  commonly 
used  sounds  of  its  elders.  The  a,  aa,  ho,  u,  natural  inter- 
jections, have  now  added  to  them  baba,  dada,  dodo,  atta,  papa, 
ptavia,  bebe,  etc.,  words  to  which,  however,  much  haziness  of 
meaning  long  attaches.  During  this  period  the  first  awakening 
of  the  musical  sense  causes  the  child  to  give  utterance  to  un- 
counted repetitions  of  his  favourite  words,  and  at  the  same 
time  the  words  used  by  him  shape  themselves  more  and  more 
to  the  phonetics  of  those  about  him,  and  less  of  the  parent's 
divining  instinct  is  needed  to  interpret  their  significations. 
III.  The  period  of  thought-expression.  Here  the  child  is  busied 
with  the  connection  of  word  and  idea,  the  change  from  mere 
onomatopoeia  and  interjection  to  the  real  speech-word  (342, 
p.  46). 

Such  periods  as  these,  however,  as  Gutzmann  pomts  out 
(260,  p.  12),  are  not  always  sharply  indicated;  some  highly- 
gifted  children  at  the  age  of  three  years  hardly  speak  at  all, 
while  undoubted  idiots  are  sometimes  characterised  by  a 
perfect  stream  of  babble.  Perhaps  there  is  no  inconsiderable 
difference  in  the  individual  abilities  of  children  to  hear  their 
own  sounds,  and  the  pleasure-element  resulting  from  play  with 


94  fiiE  ciiiLt) 

the  voice  is  subject  to  wide  variations.  Hence,  also,  variation 
in  the  power  and  scope  of  imitation,  for  which  the  child  finds 
preparation  in  listening  to  itself,  as  well  as  to  others  at  a  later 
period.  Though  the  difficulties  of  imitation  are  very  great,  the 
child  profits  by  his  good  powers  of  observation,  and  often 
makes  surprising  advances ;  but  no  fixed  conclusion  as  to  the 
intelligence  of  the  young  human  being  can  be  drawn  from  the 
observation  of  a  few  peculiarities  of  speech  and  their  develop- 
ment. Not  alone  'baby-talk,'  on  the  part  of  parents  and 
nurses,  may,  grace  to  the  child's  amazing  talent  for  imitation, 
do  his  growing  speech  serious  injury,  but  also  forced  attempts 
at  hurrying  on  his  language,  especially  where  any  defects  of 
speech  are  present  in  the  persons  of  his  immediate  environ- 
ment. Another  possible  cause  of  injury  is  the  interference  of 
parents  and  nurses  with  the  child's  babble  and  play-talk ;  and 
at  an  opposite  pole  from  the  lullaby,  which  is  so  similar  all 
over  the  world,  we  have  the  noise  and  din  of  the  schoolroom, 
which  to  the  ear-learning  child  means  much  of  evil,  the  tone 
of  voice  and  speech-action  being  often  very  much  affected,  while 
a  very  large  percentage  of  stuttering  and  like  disturbances  of  lan- 
guage is  directly  traceable  to  the  contamination  of  the  school, 
the  greater  family.  Nor  can  the  use  of  language  in  childhood 
serve  as  a  sure  criterion  of  intelligence,  for  it  has  not  seldom 
happened  that  in  the  same  family  a  child  of  five  years,  though 
quite  as  intelligent  as  his  brother  or  sister,  has,  so  far  as  the 
proper  and  skilful  handling  of  speech  is  concerned,  lagged 
behind  one  of  three,  and,  if  Gutzmann's  view  is  correct,  children 
tend  normally  to  speak  late  and  to  walk  late,  contrary  to  a 
current  popular  opinion. 

Dr  W.  Oltuszewski,  of  Warsaw,  in  his  discussion  of  the 
mental  and  linguistic  development  of  the  child  (462,  p.  30), 
distinguishes  three  periods  in  the  development  of  child-lan- 
guage: I.  Primitive  period— Q'poch.  of  individual  sounds  and 
mute  language,  preceding  the  developmental  period  per  se. 
This  period  is  characterised  by  the  reflex  and  pain  phenomena 
of  the  primitive  sounds,  especially  the  vowels,  dependent  upon 
the  innate  capacity  of  the  articulatory  organs  to  function,  and 
have  nothing  to  do  with  the  memory-centres  of  language, 
which  develop  considerably  later ;  also  by  pantomime,  gesture 
and  mimic  movements,  which  at  this  period  belong  to  the 
instinctive  reflexes,  and  not,  as  later,  to  the  imitation  move- 
ments— these    are   the   child's    original   language,    expressing 


THE   PERIODS   OF   CHILDHOOD  95 

his  feelings,  impressions,  excitations,  etc.,  long  before  the 
real  language-centres  have  been  formed.  2.  Period  of  the 
development  of  the  linguistic  memory-centres.  First  to  develop 
is  the  hearing-memory,  then  the  motor  (apprehension,  repe- 
tition). 3.  Period  of  association  of  ideas  ivith  words.  (Inde- 
pendent language.) 

Egger  recognises  three  periods  in  the  development  of  the 
language  of  the  child  (181,  p.  32):  i.  Instinctive^  natural 
language.  A  stage  of  speech  common  to  all  times  and  all 
peoples,  which  is  gradually  restricted  by  the  progress  of  the 
next  linguistic  stage.  2.  Artificial  language.  Peculiar  to  each 
child,  useful  for  communication  with  other  children,  and, 
especially  with  nurses  and  parents,  a  form  of  speech  which 
never  rises  to  the  dignity  of  the  language  of  a  people,  or  even 
of  a  family.  3.  Family,  national  language.  This  form  of 
speech  gradually  supersedes  the  artificial  language,  just  as  the 
latter  did  the  instinctive  signs,  and  even  more  completely. 

Some  investigators  have  gone  into  considerable  detail  and 
recorded  many  interesting  facts  missed  by  less  patient  inquirers. 
Thus  Ur  Allaire,  whose  conclusions  are  based  upon  daily  ob- 
servations during  several  years  of  the  development  of  his  own 
children,  distinguishes  in  the  growth  of  the  rudiments  of 
infantile  speech  the  following  periods,  the  limits  of  which 
are  not  inevitably  fixed,  but  may  vary  according  to  'native 
weakness,  suffering,  disease  and  sickness,  heredity,  the  con- 
formation of  the  diverse  parts  of  the  laryngeal  apparatus  and 
of  the  organs  of  hearing,  and,  besides,  according  to  the  presence 
of  other  children,  who  become  real  teachers '  (2,  p.  485) : — 

I.  Periods  of  Cries  and  Mute  Movefnents  of  Suction. — About 
coeval  with  the  first  week  of  life.  This  period  is  characterised 
in  storm  and  stress  by  the  disordered  cries  and  movements, 
which,  as  Ambroise  Pare  says,  accompany  the  entrance  of  the 
child  'into  the  calamities  of  human  life,' and  in  its  calm  by  the 
rapprochement  of  the  lips  in  mute  suction,  the  result  of  un- 
conscious desire  and  an  empty  and  hungry  stomach. 

II.  Period  of  the  Formation  of  the  Sound  A  and  of  the  Birth 
of  Musical  Song. — Synchronous  with  the  second  week  of  life. 
During  this  period  the  physiognomy  continues  impassable, 
although,  under  the  influences  of  environments,  the  sense 
organs  are  beginning  to  function ;  the  movements  are  still  dis- 
ordered, but  the  cries  have  already  become  more  varied  and 
more  expressive,  as  waking  moments  show ;  the  suction  move- 


96  TilF,    CHILD 

merits  are  still  mute,  but  the  child  already  repeats  and  sings,  a 
very  gentle  sound  produced  by  the  opening  of  the  mouth  and 
simple  expiralion,  the  sound  a,  which  Scaliger  called  p-ima 
notissamaijue  infantis  vox. 

III.  Fcriod  of  Tramformaiion  of  Miife  Suction  Movements 
into  Labial  Noises. — Corresponds  to  the  third  and  fourth  weeks 
of  life.  During  this  period  the  physiognomy  becomes  ani- 
mated and  the  cries  are  modified  in  tone  and  timbre;  'the  lii) 
movements  are  no  longer  mute,  the  suctions  changing  to  a 
labial  noise  (not  spontaneous  as  Taine  believes),  which  can  be 
rendered  by  b,  in,  or  some  intermediary  sound ;  sometimes  the 
child,  giving  itself  up  to  a  sort  of  tasting,  utters  from  time  to 
time  the  nasal  sound  7ija,  nja  ;  the  a  is  modulated  more  and 
more,  and  there  arises  a  prattling,  a  sort  of  song  formed  by 
the  breath,  the  expiration  of  this  glottal  sound  is  sometimes 
modified  to  e,  or  nasalised  to  an.'  We  have  here  '  the  a  of 
lacteal  drunkenness,  determined  by  the  repletion  of  the 
stomach.'  It  is  with  reference  to  this  period  that  we  may  say 
in  the  words  of  Persius,  which  Pare  cites :  Magister  artis 
ingenique  largitor  Venter,  negatas  artifex  sequi  voces  ('the 
stomach,  i.e.,  hunger,  is  the  master  of  art  and  the  dispenser  of 
genius,  skilful  to  supply  an  eloquence  which  nature  had  denied.) 

IV.  Period  of  the  Formation  of  Labial,  Guttural  and  Nasal 
Articulations. — Corresponding  to  the  second  month  of  life. 
During  this  period  the  features  of  the  child  are  lighted  up 
more  and  more  under  the  influence  of  the  more  complete 
development  of  the  organs  of  sense  and  new-born  smiles  and 
tears ;  '  the  cries  no  longer  indicate  merely  sufferings  and 
needs,  but  indicate  rather  clearly  desires  and  wishes,  and, 
moreover,  serve  to  nourish  the  laryngeal  muscles,  for  which 
inaction  would  be  injurious ;  the  movements  are  abrupt,  rapid, 
especially  when  the  child  manifests  its  will,  or  evinces  a  great 
satisfaction;  the  lip  movements  can  be  heard  as  b,  m, p,  and 
combine  soon  with  the  glottal  sound  a,  to  form  ba,  ma,  pa  : 
the  soft  labial  b  and  the  labio-nasal  m,  which,  at  first,  were 
only  sketched,  are  no  longer  confused,  and  the  strong  labial/ 
(following  always  /')  seems  to  indicate  more  especially  repletion 
of  the  stomach.'  At  intervals  nasals  are  emitted,  but  perhaps 
'  the  most  important  characteristic  of  this  period  is  the  forma- 
tion of  guttural  sounds,  more  or  less  sung,  when  the  child, 
filled  with  milk,  shows  his  happiness  by  vibrations  of  the 
throat  and  the  tongue,  i.e.,  by  a  succession  of  gna,  ka,  ra,  and 


THE    PERIODS   OF   CHILDHOOD  9/ 

especially  of  the  Arabian  rha.     The  gutturals  come  after  the 
labials  and  the  labio-nasals. 

V.  Period  of  the  Formation  of  Dental  Articulations. — Lasting 
from  the  end  of  the  second  to  the  end  of  the  sixth  month  of 
life.  During  this  period  'the  child's  features  assume  a  real 
expression,  the  vagueness  and  indecision  in  the  look  disappears 
and  the  organs  of  sense  function  somewhat  regularly;  the 
movements  (rather  more  co  ordinated)  become  true  means  of 
expression,  like  cries,  laughter,  tears,  silence  itself  accom- 
panied or  not  by  contractions  of  the  frontal,  the  muscle  of 
astonishment,  surprise  and  admiration,  and  at  the  moment  of 
waking  the  desire  to  play  is  easily  read  off.'  The  musical  song 
becomes  more  frequent  and  '  the  child  utters  ballads  at  the 
moon  or  the  rising  light,  or  gives  voice  to  complaints  which 
sometimes  terminate  in  a  languishing  ma,  na,  ma.^  Towards 
the  end  of  this  period  the  repertory  of  the  articulate  voice  is 
enriched  by  the  soft  dental  d  and  the  strong  dental  t,  which 
at  once  combine  with  a  to  form  da  and  ta — the  emission  of 
these  sounds  seeming  to  occur  at  the  epoch  of  salivation  pre- 
ceding the  dental  eruption,  or  during  the  teething.  All  these 
monosyllabic  sounds — 'the  primitive  roots  of  human  nature' 
de  Brosse  styled  them — are  repeated  to  satiety  in  the  form 
of  beads  (if  one  can  so  express  oneself),  ma,  ma,  ma,  ma  ;  pa, 
fa,  pa,  pa,  etc. 

VI.  Period  of  the  Formation  of  the  First  JVords. — Correspond- 
ing to  the  last  six  months  of  the  first  year  of  life.  This  period 
'is  marked  by  the  clear  manifestation  of  intellectual  life,  which 
has  begun  with  the  gradual  development  of  the  senses';  the 
child  hears  and  listens,  looks  and  sees,  his  fingers  exercise 
better  their  tactile  functions,  his  movements  are  more  rapid 
and  expressive  and  become  real  gestures,  his  cries  are  more 
sung,  especially  when  he  feels  the  immoderate  necessity  of 
imitating  the  words  he  hears.  In  this  period  also  'the  diverse 
parts  of  the  laryngeal  apparatus  having  acquired  strength, 
vigour,  and  a  certain  habit  of  imitation,  with  the  aid  of  ihe 
brain  cells,  the  child  begins  to  form  true  dissyllables  ;  the  7na  and 
pa  for  example,  which  had  become  aniama,  apapa,  mamama, 
papapa,  change  to  mama,  maman,  papa,  etc.,  the  articulate 
sounds  gaining  in  strength  and  clearness  what  they  lose  in 
quantity,  till,  towards  the  end  of  the  first  year,  appear  the  first 
words  (in  the  real  acceptation  of  the  term),  7na7na,  papa,  in 
which  thought  and  expression  are  associated.' 


98  THE  CHILD 

The  alphabet  of  the  child  a  year  old,  according  to  Dr 
Allaire,  would  contain  the  following  letters,  given  in  the  order 
of  their  appearance  :  a  (modified  sometimes  to  e,  or  nasalised 
to  a;/) ;  the  labio-nasal  m,  the  labials  l>,  />,  and  the  nasal  n ; 
the  gutturals,  g,  k,  r,  rh  (Arabian) ;  the  dentals,  d,  t.  It  is 
only  later  in  life  that  the  child  utters  the  vowels  /,  o,  it,  the 
labials/  v,  the  lingual  e,  and  the  sibilant  s.  The  evolution  of 
the  beginnings  of  infant  speech  is  very  slow,  physical  needs 
and  stomachal  contentment  giving  place  gradually  to  self- 
imitation  aud  the  influences  of  the  personal  7nilteu.  Dr 
Allaire,  however,  mars  a  little,  perhaps,  his  excellent  paper, 
when,  referring  to  the  fact  (cited  by  Dr  E.  B.  Tylor)  that 
certain  Australian  tribes  have  one  word,  mainman,  for  '  father ' 
and  for  'big  toe,'  he  asks  whether  the  analogy  cannot  be 
understood  by  remembering  that  '  the  child,  as  if  he  were  still 
inlluenced  by  the  attitudes  of  his  foetal  life,  acquires  very  early 
the  habit  of  playing  with  his  feet  or  with  his  big  toes,  singing 
ma,  ama.^  It  is  more  than  likely  that  to  the  Australian,  as 
to  other  primitive  peoples,  the  big  toe  is  'the  father  of  the 
foot.'  Further  details  on  these  topics  will  be  found  in  the 
chapter  on  language. 

Even  the  mortality  statistics  of  childhood  and  manhood 
furnish  evidences  of  epochism  and  periodicity. 

General  Periodicity. — Siegert,  in  his  '  Periodicity  in  the 
Nature  of  the  Child,'  has  discussed  and  sought  to  interpret  the 
constant  flux  and  reflux  which  seems  to  characterise  childhood. 
Growth  is  rhythmic,  bodily  and  mentally,  in  the  large  and  in 
the  small;  day,  night,  week,  month,  season,  year,  have  all 
their  progressive  and  regressive  phases,  variations,  which  gradu- 
ally decrease  in  extent  and  frequency,  occurring  till  the  goal  is 
reached  and  the  permanent  appears.  Every  form  of  growth 
and  of  activity  knows  these  variations,  and  the  good  child  is 
sometimes  bad  for  a  while ;  the  intelligent  child  stupid ;  the 
neat  and  orderly,  dirty  and  untidy ;  the  strong,  weak ;  the 
truthful,  lying ;  the  healthy  and  active,  lazy  and  moody ;  the 
'numskull,' bright;  the  mere  memoriser,  creative  ;  the  imitator, 
capable  of  independent  thinking  ;  the  great  eater,  fasting ;  the 
scholar,  athletic  ;  the  radical,  conservative  ;  the  optimist,  pessi- 
mistic ;  the  merry,  sad;  the  high-spirited,  depressed.  The 
general  conclusions  at  which  the  author  arrives  are  as  follows 

(596,  P-  35) :—  .,...,, 

I.  In  every  child  the  periodicity  of  development  manifests 


THE    PERIODS   OF   CHILDHOOD  99 

itself  in  peculiar  form.  2.  The  development  of  the  whole 
body  as  well  as  of  each  individual  organ  takes  place  with  the 
continual  alternation  of  activity  and  rest  (passivity).  3.  To 
every  intensive  intellectual  advance  corresponds  a  retrogression 
in  corporeal  relation  and  vice  versa.  4.  The  strong  advance 
of  one  intellectual  activity  carries  with  it  a  corresponding  de- 
pression of  other  intellectual  activities.  Especially  does  the 
mental  development  need  the  alternation  of  productive  work 
and  receptive  work.  5.  External  and  internal  causes  hasten 
or  retard  the  periodical  recurrence  of  action  and  reaction — the 
greater  the  advance  in  the  moment  of  action  the  greater  the 
relapse  in  the  moment  of  reaction. 

Children  ought,  therefore,  to  be  educated  in  accordance 
with  this  law  of  periodical  recurrence,  of  action  and  reaction, 
of  alternate  corporeal  and  intellectual  exercise,  of  productivity 
and  receptivity,  of  stimulation  and  fatigue,  of  exaltation  and 
depression,  which  dominates  their  entire  development.  Edu- 
cation ought  to  respect  two  things,  individuality  and  periodicity, 
and  to  know  that  every  individuality  is  sni generis  in  its  perio- 
dicity. The  school  must  recognise  the  flux  and  the  reflux, 
which  are  perfectly  normal  and  natural  in  childhood,  and  seek 
to  work  harmoniously  with  the  individual  and  the  social,  the  in- 
ternal and  the  external  factors  which  produce  and  control  them. 
The  first  year  of  school  life,  the  period  between  the  third  and 
fourth,  and  that  between  the  sixth  and  seventh,  are  epochs  in 
which  both  intellectual  and  corporeal  regression  seems  to  occur, 
and  a  regression  greater  than  that  which  is  to  be  normally  ex- 
pected according  to  the  traditions  of  periodicity.  At  these 
times  intensive  reaction  is  stamped  upon  the  children  (fatigue, 
dulness,  carelessness  of  all  sorts,  slovenliness,  etc.),  of  which 
not  a  little  may  be  due  to  the  overburdening  occasioned  by 
the  school  life.  The  schoolroom  ought  never  to  be  without 
the  motto  cited  from  Landor  :  '  In  every  child  there  are  many 
children  :  but  coming  forth  year  after  year,  each  somewhat 
like  and  somewhat  varying.' 

Old  Age — 'Second  Childhood: — Most  of  the  proverbs  and 
folk-sayings  in  which  childhood  and  old  age  are  compared 
assert  a  resemblance  in  the  weakness,  silliness,  helplessness, 
etc.,  of  these  two  periods  of  human  existence.  The  saying, 
•  once  a  man  and  twice  a  child,'  common  in  some  form  or 
other  to  most  languages,  expresses  a  widespread  belief  in  the 
similarity  of  the  latter  end  of  man  to  his  first  beginning.     The 

8 


lOO  TIIK    CHILD 

Zuni  Indians,  in  their  wonderful  cosmogonic  story,  as  recorded 
by  Mr  Gushing,^  have  stated  the  parallel  on  a  very  physiological 
basis  : — 

*  IJehold  !  And  \vc  may  now  see  why  like  new-born  children 
are  the  very  aged ;  childish  withal  —  d-yaznvi  [dangerously 
susceptible,  tender,  delicate] — not  only  toothless  too,  but  also 
sure  to  die  of  diarrluca  if  they  eat  ever  so  little  save  the  soft 
parts  and  broths  of  cooked  food.  For  are  not  the  babes  new- 
come  from  the  S/ii-u-na  (liazy,  steam-growing)  world  ;  and  are 
not  the  aged  about  to  enter  the  Shi-po-loa  (mist-enshrouded) 
world,  where  cooked  food  unconsumed  is  never  needed  by  the 
fully  dead  ? '  The  reason  for  this  is  detailed  at  great  length  in 
Zuni  legends. 

The  theory  of  the  '  second  cliildhood '  of  man  has  also 
found  a  somewhat  firm  lodgment  in  science,  in  the  shape  of 
the  doctrine  of  'involution,'  according  to  which  there  is  in 
old  age  a  general  decay  and  weakening  of  the  physiological 
functions.  This  causes  the  aged  to  resemble  or  to  simulate 
in  certain  respects  the  child,  whose  evolution  has  not  proceeded 
very  far.  Psychiatrists  point  out  that  the  failure  of  age  begins 
at  the  top,  and  we  have  the  '  childishness '  of  old  men  and 
women  ;  the  psychologist  notes  the  force  of  instinct  in  the  old 
which  brings  them  near  to  the  child ;  the  biologists  record  the 
defects  of  movement  and  carriage  in  old  age,  which  recall  the 
beginnings  of  these  human  arts  in  childhood  ;  and  the  physi- 
ologist recognises  in  the  old  a  return  of  the  body  and  its  parts 
in  some  particulars  to  the  condition  of  the  child. 

Age-changes. — Some  of  the  more  noteworthy  changes  which 
the  human  body  and  its  organs  undergo  with  the  process  of 
age  are  contained  in  the  following  table,  which  is  based  upon 
the  data  in  the  paper  of  G.  Delaunay  (155) : — 


Character. 

Change. 

Individuals  generally 
Race      .... 
Sex         .... 

differ  most  from  one  another  at  about  45 
years,  the  culmination  of  evolution 

anatomical  and  physiological  differences 
much  more  marked  in  adult  age 

as  to  nutrition,  muscular  strength,  intelli- 
gence, etc.,  men  differ  most  from  women 
between  45-50 

'^  Joiirn.  Amer.  Folk- Lore,  V.  p.  56. 


THE   PERIODS   OF    CHILDHOOD 


lOI 


Character. 


Constitution    . 


Hilateralism    . 
General  characters 
Quantity  of  blood 


Density  of  blood 
Quantity  of  hc-emoglobin 
Number  of  red  corpuscles 
Number    of    white    cor- 
puscles 

Proportion  of  water  in 
blood 

Proportion  of  mineral  mat- 
ter in  osseous  system . 

Organic  matter 

Proportion  of  carbonate 
of  lime 

Phosphate  of  lime  . 

Colour  of  hair 

Form  of  hair  . 

Heart     .... 

Lungs     .... 

Brain      .... 

Thymus .... 

Thyroid  gland 

Kidneys 

Suprarenal  capsules 

Foot       .... 

Frequency  of  meals 

Amount  of  food  consum.ed 
Pulse      .... 


Respiration     . 
Oxygen  . 
Carbonic  acid 


Change. 


constitutional  differences  are  most  marked 
among  adults,  where  we  meet  with  very 
strong,  strong,  medium,  weak 

the  two  sides  of  the  body  differ  most  in 
adults,  much  less  in  childhood  and  age 

increase  in  dhTerence  up  to  45,  and  then 
gradually  decrease  after  50 

increases  from  infancy  to  adult  age,  then 
decreases 


diminishes  from   childhood   to   adult    age, 
then  increases 


increases  up  to  45  years,  then  decreases 
decreases  up  to  45  years,  then  increases 

increases  up  to  45  years,  then  decreases 

decreases  up  to  45  years,  then  increases 

darkens  from  childhood  to  adult  age 

curly  hair  changes  to  straight 

increases 

increase 

increases 

decreases 

decreases 

decrease 

decrease 

changes  from  flat  and  long  to  short  and 
arched 

decreases  from  childhood  to  adult  age,  then 
increases 

increases  to  adult  age,  then  decreases 

changes  from  frequent  and  feeble  in  child- 
hood to  rarer  and  strong  in  adult,  then 
in  old  age  becomes  frequent  and  weak 
again 

less  frequent  from  childhood  to  adult  age, 
then  more  frequent 

absorption  increases  from  childhood  to  adult 
age,  then  decreases 

excretion  increases  from  childhood  to  adult 
ase,  then  decreases 


102 


THE   CHILD 


CirARACTliR. 

CilANf;E. 

Fcciimlity  of  woman 

diminishes  after  25  years 

Wciglit  of  cIiil<ltLn  . 

increases  until  motlier  has  reached  40  years 

Movements     . 

change  from  centripetal  to  centrifugal 

Writing  .... 

tlrst  from  rigiit  to  left,  then  viie  versa 

Voice      .... 

changes   from   acuity   to   gravity  up  to  50 

years,  and  after  60  from  gravity  to  acuity 

Intelligence    . 

increase  from  brute  to  intelligence  up  to  50 

years,  and  after  60  descent  towards  im- 

becility 

Morals    .... 

increase  from  vice  to  virtue  up  to  50  years, 

and  after  60  ilescent  towards  vice 

Fear       .... 

from  fear  to  courage 

Appearance  of  organs  and 

functions  . 

first  the  lower,  then  the  higher 

Disappearance  of  organs 

and  functions     . 

first  the  higher,  then  the  lower 

Vegetative  functions 

appear  early,  disappear  late 

Animal  functions     . 

appear  later,  disappear  earlier 

Higher  faculties  of  mind 

appear  between  25-30,  and  often  diminish 

after  50 

Lower  faculties 

appear  twice  (childhood  and  old  age),  have 

two  maxima 

Higher  feculties 

appear  once,  have  only  one  maximum  in 

adult  age 

M.  Delaunay  notes  also  that,  being  compai-atively  the 
highest,  each  faculty  is  dominant  at  the  time  of  its  appearance, 
yielding  only  to  the  appearance  of  some  higher  faculty  that  is 
dominant  in  like  manner,  and  sometimes  being  completely 
annihilated  by  the  latter.  We  can,  perhaps,  explain  in  this  way 
the  disappearance  in  the  adult  of  certain  things  {e.g.,  gluttony, 
idleness,  lust,  etc.)  which  characterise  childhood  and  adoles- 
cence on  the  one  hand,  and,  on  the  other,  the  reappearance, 
with  the  disappearance  of  the  higher  faculties  and  the  recru- 
descence of  the  lower,  of  the  vices  of  the  adolescent  in  the  old 
man,  who  '  ends  by  "  falling  into  childhood."  '  What  is  said 
of  faculties  seems  also  to  apply  to  their  products,  hence  'the 
memory  of  a  language  learned  at  the  age  of  four  years,  and 
afterwards  forgotten,  returns  to  the  old  man  during  the  last 
years  of  his  life.' 

But  there  is  another  side  to  the  question  of  old  age.  It  is 
not  by  any  means  altogether  undoing,  involutionj  devolution. 


THE   PERIODS   OF  CHILDHOOD  I03 

The  folk-praise  of  the  wisdom  of  old  age,  the  fashioning  of 
the  senator  out  of  the  senex,  and  of  the  oracle  out  of  the 
aged  woman,  have  not  been  completely  baseless,  and  science 
may  go  more  than  one  step  in  the  direction  of  justifying  the 
peoples  of  all  times  and  of  all  races  who  selected  from  the 
ranks  of  the  old  men  and  women  their  historians  and  teachers, 
their  leaders  and  advisers,  their  prophets,  seers  and  priests. 
There  is,  in  a  sense,  a  golden  age  of  old  age ;  and  old  age, 
like  childhood,  sometimes  touches  on  divinity,  an  aspect  of 
it  which  eclipses  all  the  morbid  and  phylogenetically  degenera- 
tive characteristics  of  this  time  of  the  life  of  the  individual, 
not  a  few  of  which,  senile  dementia,  e.g.,  are  of  complex 
origin,  while  the  physical  or  somatic  origin  of  other 
ailments  and  affections,  generally  attributed  to  old  age 
J>er  se,  is  very  probable,  as  Dr  Scott  notes  in  his  recent 
study  of  old  age  and  death  (583,  p.  80).  We  are  in 
need  of  just  such  an  investigation  of  old  age  and  its 
phenomena,  as  the  '  child-study  '  movement,  an  investigation 
that  shall  put  old  age  in  its  true  phylogenetic  and  ontogenetic 
setting,  and  emphasise  its  role  in  the  individual  and  racial  life 
of  man.  And  it  is  possibly  by  no  accident  that  the  Chinese, 
one  of  the  most  child-like  of  all  peoples,  have  utilised  so 
well,  and  recognised  so  remarkably,  the  value  and  wisdom  of 
the  old.  From  them  might  have  come  the  definition  given 
by  Brinton — '  The  sage  is  he  whose  life  is  a  consistent  whole, 
and  who  carries  out  in  his  age  the  plans  which  he  laid  in 
youth'(78,  p.  75). 

Just  as  in  childhood  naive  wisdom  proves  that  the  brain  and 
its  associate  organs  are  not  altogether  functionless,  even  in  the 
highest  sense,  so,  in  old  age,  the  clear  judgment  and  perfect 
control  of  the  higher  mental  faculties,  which  so  often  charac- 
terise the  aged,  centenarians  even,  justify  the  statement  that 
the  cerebral  organ  is  the  last  to  decay,  except  under  patho- 
logical or  abnormal  conditions.  This  is  confirmed  by  Hum- 
phrey's study  of  900  cases  on  record  of  extreme  old  age 
(310,  p.  24,  p.  28),  and,  as  Dr  Scott  remarks,  'in  green  old 
age  {age  de  re/our)  there  can  hardly  be  any  doubt  that  the 
intellectual  qualities  are  even  relatively  improved '  (538,  p.  79). 
The  connection  of  longevity  with  the  intellectual  and  cognate 
professions  acts  almost  like  a  natural  selection,  and  secures  to 
the  race  an  elected  and  reasoned  service  on  the  part  of  the 
sane  and  healthy  aged  that  can  only  be  compared  with  the 


Green  Old  Age'  among  the  Ainu  of  Japan. 

(From  Rep.   U.S.  Nat.  Mus..  i8go.) 


THE   TERIODS   OF   CHILDHOOD  I05 

instinctive  devotion  of  early  maturity,  or  the  enthusiasm  of 
childhood.  In  old  age,  the  individual  as  such,  in  his  onto- 
genetic right,  can  serve  the  race  with  real  distinction,  for,  to 
use  the  words  of  Dr  Scott,  '  old  age  is  really  the  test  of  life 
from  an  individual  standpoint,'  and  '  it  is  the  race  life  that  is 
normally  the  source  of  our  greatest  force  and  happiness,  and 
old  age  is  only  successful  when  it  has  so  absorbed  this  life  that 
its  more  intellectual  service  becomes  its  deepest  motive  and 
highest  happiness  '  (538,  p.  85). 

Sometime,  with  the  increase  of  health,  peace,  and  other 
conditions  which  favour  longevity,  and  the  prevalence,  to  a 
much  greater  extent  than  the  hurry,  bustle  and  youthful 
ambition  of  the  day  permit  as  yet,  of  '  green  old  age,'  this 
true  '  second  childhood '  of  the  individual  may  become  con- 
sciously beneficial  intellectually  to  the  race,  as  has  been  the 
first  childhood  unconsciously. 


<5" 


CHAPTER    V 

THE    LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD 

^4""'^  Language. — Degerando's  treatise  on  the  education  of 
deaf-mutes  (153),  although  pubUshed  in  1S47,  contains  many 
very  valuable  and  interesting  thoughts  concerning  the  origin 
and  development  of  human  speech,  not  alone  with  respect  to 
those  unfortunate  beings  who,  up  to  the  sixteenth  century, 
were  hardly  deemed  susceptible  of  any  education  at  all,  whose 
attempted  instruction  was  more  than  once  placed  under  the 
ban  of  theology,  and  whom  the  Roman  Law,  up  to  the  time 
of  Justinian,  saw  fit  to  ignore,  but  concerning  the  language  ac- 
quisition of  normal  children  as  well.  According  to  Degerando, 
'  the  mother  tongue  is  learned  from  the  cradle,  without  art, 
by  the  sole  effect  of  the  circumstances  in  which  the  child 
finds  himself  situated  ;  he  does  not  know  how  he  learned  it ; 
the  spectators  have  not  remarked  it,  and  the  philosophers 
have  not  inquired  about  it '  (153,  I.  p.  12) ;  indeed,  it  furnishes 
a  notable  example  of  the  fact  that  'we  are  generally  not 
astonished  at  the  really  marvellous-in-itself,  but  at  that  which 
is  beyond  the  circle  of  our  habits.'  The  author  emphasises 
the  importance  of  the  mother  as  the  first  nurse,  and  the  first 
teacher  of  the  child,  and  notes  how  '  the  mother  really,  and 
the  nurse  as  well,  plays  the  role  of  teacher,  almost  without 
knowing  it,  at  least  without  method,  design  or  art'  (153, 1.  P-  33)- 
Custom  is  the  great  shaper  of  the  child  in  matters  of  language, 
and  he  has  a  kind  of  instinct  to  receive,  '  profiting  by  what 
is  said  for  him,  and  by  what  is  said  in  his  presence.'  In 
spoken  language  the  little  child  learns  rather  by  sight  than  by 
hearing,  and  his  vocabulary  grows  by  the  constant  association 
of  some  word  of  mouth  with  the  language  of  his  feelings, 
expression  of  the  eyes,  features  of  the  face,  sound  of  the 
voice,  caresses,  cares,  etc.  Degerando  notes  that  '  the  child 
of  the  rich  understands   more  words   and   less   actions,    the 


I08  THE   CHILD 

child  of  the  poor  less  words  and  more  actions,'  this  being  the 
reflex  of  the  environment.  Of  imitation  he  remarks  :  '  'I'he 
faculty  of  imitation,  accompanied  by  an  instinctive  need,  a 
secret  pleasure,  is  a  faculty  that  seems  to  predominate  above 
all  in  infancy,  as  it  does,  in  general,  at  the  first  period  of 
intellectual  development'  (153,  I.  p.  42).  The  piesence  of 
children  of  about  its  own  age  leads  the  child  to  set  up 
a  regular  conmierce  of  words,  while  with  those  a  little 
younger  than  himself  he  becomes  a  play-teacher  of  language  ; 
often  their  discourse  is  singularly  elliptical,  they  do  not  express 
themselves  by  general  ideas,  but  by  vague,  confused,  incom- 
plete images,  and  they  are  especially  apt  to  be  deceived  by 
figurative  expressions,  which  they  take  in  all  their  literalness. 

When  it  comes  to  instruction,  '  children  are  still  rather  the 
pupils  of  circumstances,'  and  with  reading  they  enter  a  new 
world.  In  writing — 'picturing  language' — the  child  'speaks 
quite  low,  as  if  he  spoke  to  someone';  when  he  reads,  he 
'  repeats  quite  low  the  corresponding  words,  as  if  he  were 
listening  to  someone — the  words  'of  the  articulate  language, 
both  in  writing  and  in  reading,  being  retraced,  at  least  in  imagina- 
tion '  (153,  I.  p.  59). 

It  was  formerly  believed  that  deaf-mutes  needed  'to  be 
given  a  soul,' but,  as  Degerando  points  out  (153,  II.  p.  70),  'the 
deaf-mute  takes  refuge  in  the  inexhaustible  fecundity  of  human 
ideas,  and  creates  a  language  of  his  own — rich,  expressive, 
eloquent  even,  eminently  pictures(iue — the  language  of  action, 
pantomime,'  in  which  analogy  and  the  social  factor  play  their 
appropriate  parts.  The  deaf-mute  has  ideas  for  which  he  has 
no  words,  but  no  expressions  devoid  of  sense.  The  sign- 
language  of  deaf-mutes  has  its  reduction  signs  corresponding 
to  the  action-language  of  primitive  man,  and  these  '  find  their 
etymology  in  the  primitive  i)icture  of  which  it  is  the  abbrevia- 
tion. Deaf-mute  language  can  be  original,  mobile,  individual, 
created  at  every  moment  l)y  circumstances,  and  possessed  of 
purely  arbitrary  and  conventional  signs;'  but  Degerando 
exaggerates,  perhaps,  when  he  declares  that  '  this  naive  original 
language  paints  with  perfect  truth  the  first  operations  of  human 
intelligence'  (153,  II.  p.  97)-  There  does  seem  to  be  a  differ- 
ence, occasionally,  at  least,  between  the  deaf-mute  child's  signs 
(and  the  normal  child's)  to  his  parents,  brothers  and  sisters, 
other  children,  etc.,  and  those  of  deaf-mutes  taught  together, 
and  individuality  of  temperament  and  nature,  here,  as  else- 


THE   LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD  IO9 

where,  is  an  important  factor,  as  Degerando  illustrates  from 
Arnemann's  '  Observations  on  Deaf-Mutes,'  published  at  Berlin 
in  1799,  the  only  work  of  the  time  in  which  the  sign-language 
of  the  deaf-mutes  is  recorded,  and  by  numerous  sign-lists  of 
his  own  observation.  The  signs  by  which  Arnemann  was 
known  to  five  pupils,  who  successively  entered  the  institution, 
were  as  follows  :  (i)  indication  of  a  plaster  on  the  neck  (which 
he  had  when  he  came  first) ;  (2)  taking  off  the  hat ;  (3)  tallness; 
(4)  supporting  left  hand  on  hip  (a  mannerism) ;  (5)  drawing 
index  finger  down  nose  (he  had  a  straight  nose).  Noting  the 
'greater  perspicacity  of  the  organs  of  sense  with  savages,' 
Degerando  remarks  that  'vivacity  of  sensations  in  itself  con- 
tributes really  little  to  knowledge ' ;  but  languages  of  all  sorts, 
natural  and  artificial,  multiply  indefinitely  our  ideas,  for  'he 
who  sees  that  he  has  comprehended  his  fellow,  and  knows  that 
he  has  been  understood  by  him,  in  his  turn  will  create  an  art 
to  make  himself  forever  better  understood'  (153,  II.  167). 
In  this  man  differs  very  much  from  the  lower  animals,  it  being 
true,  in  a  sense,  that  '  man  understands  the  animal,  but  the 
animal  does  not  understand  man.'  The  various  stages  in  the 
language  of  action,  which  is  closely  related  to  drawing — is 
really  drawing — are  thus  outlined  by  Degerando:  i.  No  art; 
2.  art;  3.  auxiliary  art  (used  by  actors,  orators,  etc.);  4.  con- 
vention. Very  interesting  is  the  statement  of  Eschke,  made 
in  1799,  that  'deaf-mutes  learn  most  easily  Russian,  Polish 
and  English;  the  hardest  languages  being  Spanish,  Portuguese, 
French,  and  especially  German.' 

Gesture  and  Expression  in  Dramatic  Art. — In  connection 
with  the  racial  and  individual  peculiarities  in  the  language  of 
action,  suggested  by  Degerando's  observation,  Mantegazza's 
study  of  the  '  Scientific  Canons  of  Dramatic  Art '  is  of  value. 
By  gesture  Mantegazza  understands  'those  muscular  move- 
ments which  are  not  absolutely  necessary  to  complete  a  psychic 
work  or  function,  but  accompany  it  by  sympathy  of  influence.' 
We  do  not  teach  infants  to  laugh,  to  cry,  or  even  to  gesture 
(angrily  or  pleasantly),  and  still  less  than  all  children  do  all 
races  weep,  laugh  and  gesture  exactly  alike.  In  all  they  are 
and  all  they  do  (and  the  actor  who  seeks  to  reproduce  them 
must  be  'an  artist  rather  than  a  mere  photographer')  members 
of  each  human  race  have  something  strikingly  characteristic. 
The  Italian  is  aesthetically  serene ;  the  Frenchman  ready  to 
leap ;  the  German  filled  with  the  thought  that  is  whirling  in 


no  THE  CHILD 

his  brain;  the  Englishman's  characteristics  are  contempt  and 
energy  ;  the  Spaniard's,  cahii  and  voluptuous  arrogance.  The 
Italian  is  an  artist  in  speech  and  movement ;  the  Frenchman 
a  vivacious  pleasure-seeker ;  the  German  a  slow-moving  philo- 
sopher ;  the  Englishman,  a  German  without  bonhomie ;  the 
Spaniard  an  Itafian  orientalised.  These  are  the  peculiarities 
which  limit  the  actor  (and  all  children  are  very  early  in  life 
actors)  in  the  search  for  the  'true  beautiful,'  the  expression  of 
which  is  beyond  that  of  the  true.  Not  even  stopped  ears  and 
a  silent  tongue  can  utterly  suppress  these  age-old  race  tempera- 
ments and  race  characteristics  which  play  their  ro/e  in  the 
evolution  and  variation  of  sign-speech. 

Gestures  of  Primitive  Peoples. — Darwin,  in  his  study  of  the 

expression  of  the  emotions  in  man  and  animals,  after  noting 

the  fact  that  many  of  the  physical  indications  and  expressions 

of  laughter,  fear,  suffering,  rage,  anger,  love  and  pleasure  do 

not  characterise  man  exclusively,  but  were  pre-human,  being 

found  in  various  lower  animals  of  widely  different  races,  came 

to  the  conclusion  that  '  the  same  state  of  mind  is  expressed 

throughout  the  world  with  remarkable  uniformity,  and  this  fact 

is  in  itself  interesting  as  evidence  of  the  close  similarity  of 

bodily  structure  and  mental  disposition  of  all  the  races  of 

mankind.'     Nevertheless,  there  is  diversity  in  this  unity.     Dr 

Max  Bartels   (after  Vaughan   Stevens)   has   investigated   the 

emotional  gestures  of  the  Orang  Hutan,  a  very  primitive  people 

of  Malacca,  with  reference  to  the  syllabus  employed  by  Darwin 

in  his  researches,  with  the  result  of  developing  the  existence  of 

not  a  few  differences  between  the  two  tribes  of  the  Belenda 

and  the  Meneek  (to  say  nothing  of  the  other  adjacent  peoples) 

in  the  most  elementary  gestures.     While,  e.g.,  the    Belenda 

express  astonishment  by  opening  wide  the  mouth  and  eyes 

and  lifting  the    eyebrows,    wrinkle  the  skin  about   the  eyes 

when  making  a  careful  examination  or  trying  to  understand  a 

difficult  thing,  shrug  the  shoulders  to  express  inability  to  carry 

out  something,  the    Meneek  seemingly  do  not  employ  these 

gestures.     Moreover,  differences  exist  among  the  women  and 

children  also,  and  several  of  the  modes  of  expression  in   I^ar- 

win's  list  appear  to  be  imknown  to  both  tribes,  eg.,  the  balling 

of  the  fists  in  anger,   laughter  to  tears,  a  'guilty  look.'     In 

great  fear  the  children  of  the  Belenda  act  almost  as  Europeans. 

The  children  of  the   Meneek,   however,  are  very  quiet;   the 

Belenda  men  run  away  silently,  the  women  scream  as  they 


THE   LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD  III 

dash  off,  while  the  Meneek  men  sit  down  quietly.  We  learn, 
too,  the  curious  fact  that,  '  in  the  presence  of  strange  Euro- 
peans, the  Orang  Hutan  banish  every  expression  out  of  their 
face,  and  take  on  the  appearance  of  almost  idiotic  stupidity,  in 
order  thus  to  conceal  their  real  thoughts'  (39,  p.  270). 

Sig/i-Laiiguage  of  Pr'unitive  Peoples,  Children,  etc.  —  As 
Degerando  points  out  (153,  II.  p.  193),  Dr  Samuel  Akerly, 
in  a  paper,  'Observations  on  the  Language  of  Signs,'  read 
before  the  New  York  Lyceum  of  Natural  History,  January  23, 
1823,  was  about  the  first  to  study  comparatively  the  sign- 
language  of  deaf-mutes  and  the  sign-language  of  a  primitive 
people — certain  Indians  of  North  America.  Besides  noting 
the  remarkable  closeness  in  the  rendering  of  the  ideas,  drink, 
sleep,  eat,  truth,  lie,  good,  pretty,  by  deaf-mutes  and  by  Indians, 
Dr  Akerly  observes  that  '  the  art  of  analysis  is  carried  further 
with  savages' — whereas  reduction  seemed  to  be  the  one  art  of 
deaf-mute  sign-language. 

The  most  noteworthy  contribution  to  this  topic,  however, 
is  Colonel  Garrick  Mallery's  exhaustive  essay  on  'Sign-Lan- 
guage among  North  American  Indians,  compared  with  that 
among  other  Peoples  and  Deaf-Mutes'  (393),  published  in 
1 88 1  by  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology  at  Washington.  The  sub- 
ject oi  gesture  is  treated  in  all  its  aspects,  among  animals,  in 
young  children,  in  persons  afflicted  with  mental  disorders, 
among  uninstructed  deaf-mutes  and  deaf-mutes  who  have  been 
taught,  among  low  tribes  of  man,  with  the  ignorant  classes  of 
civilised  races,  with  the  blind,  with  those  of  a  stammering 
tongue,  and  with  orators,  but  chiefly  as  evidenced  among  the 
various  tribes  of  North  American  aborigines.  It  is  absence  of 
sufficient  brain  power,  the  author  seems  to  beheve,  that  keeps 
certain  of  the  lower  animals  from  true  speech,  otherwise  the 
dog  would  turn  into  words  many  of  his  apt  gestures,  and  the 
w^onderful  imitation  of  the  parrot  would  turn  to  significance. 
In  the  course  of  his  long  companionship  with  man,  the  dog 
has  invented  not  a  few  signs  which  man  has  come  to  under- 
stand, and  not  a  few  other  animals  may  be  said  to  illustrate  the 
fact  that  the  brute  creation  understands  man's  gesture  better 
than  his  normal,  unexcited,  low  speech. 

With  young  children  a  small  number  of  words  is  often 
(but  not  always)  associated  with  a  very  large  number  of 
gestures  and  facial  expressions.  The  child's  gestures  may  be 
said  to  become  intelligent  long  in  advance  of  his  speech,  and 


112  TlIK   CHILD 

undoubtedly  he  invents  signs  as  well  as  words.  In  certain 
forms  of  mental  disorder,  the  simpler,  older  language  of  signs 
seems  to  be  intelligible,  or  to  survive  after  spoken  or  written 
speech  has  ceased  to  be  understood.  Thus  the  insane  will 
often  obey  gestures  when  words  are  of  no  avail,  the  aphasic 
subject  will  hardly  let  go  his  ejaculations  and  his  gestures. 
Congenital  deaf-mutes,  Colonel  Mallery  thinks,  will  first  make 
signs  of  the  same  sort  as  normal  children  of  the  same  age,  and 
he  accredits  to  the  blind  (Laura  Bridgeman  and  Cardinal 
Wiseman's  blind  Italian)  an  innate  power  of  development  of 
gesture  (facial  and  otherwise)  which  their  affliction  fails  to 
suppress. 

The  low  tribes  of  men  are  not  to  be  exactly  paralleled 
with  the  ignorant  and  lower  classes  of  civilised  races  and 
communities,  for  with  the  former  sign-language  is  not  such  a 
necessity  always,  since  quite  often,  even  with  very  primitive 
peoples  (the  study  of  the  North  American  Indian,  e.g.,  shows 
that  the  existence  of  a  copious  language  of  signs  does  not 
necessarily  mean  a  meagre  vocabulary),  the  development  of 
oral  language  is  very  great.  It  is  to  the  ignorant  more  than 
to  the  primitive  part  of  mankind  that  Volumnia's  advice  to 
Coriolanus  applies — '  Action  is  eloquence,  and  the  eyes  of 
the  ignorant  more  learned  than  the  ears,'  a  statement  which 
Colonel  Mallery  paraphrases  thus — 'The  hands  of  the  ignorant 
are  more  eloquent  than  their  tongues.'  Even  among  the 
educated  and  the  intelligent  the  stammerer,  through  necessity, 
and  the  man  of  eloquence,  through  excess  energy,  are  frequent 
users  of  gesture.  Gesture-speech  was  once  of  great  extent 
and  profound  importance  in  all  parts  of  the  world,  for,  as 
Colonel  Mallery  remarks  (393,  p.  284) :  '  With  voice  man 
imitated  a  few  sounds  of  nature,  with  gesture  actions,  posi- 
tions, forms,  dimensions,  directions,  distances  and  their  deri- 
vations.' In  fact,  'oral  speech  remained  rudimentary  long 
after  gesture  had  become  an  art.'  Both  in  the  childhood  of 
the  race  and  in  the  childhood  of  the  individual  the  study  of 
sign-language  is  an  important  aid  to  comparative  philology, 
the  action-etymology  of  the  Latin  wibecillus  being  no  less 
intelligible  to  a  Cheyenne  Indian  than  to  an  ancient  Roman. 
While  Colonel  Mallery  gives  many  interesting  examples  of  the 
frequent  interchange  of  conversation  and  story  by  deaf-mutes 
and  Indians  with  their  systems  of  gesture-speech,  he  by  no 
means  holds  these  to  be  identical,  but  rather  different  dialects 


THE   LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD  II3 

of  the  gesture-language  of  mankind.  Tylor's  statement  that 
'gesture-language  is  substantially  the  same  all  over  the  world' 
must,  he  says,  be  modified  to  signify  generic  uniformity  with 
specific  varieties,  for  gesture-speech,  like  any  other  human 
art,  does  not  always  employ  the  same  signs  for  the  same  ideas, 
but  rejoices  often  in  a  manifold  variety  of  expression. 

Miss  Paola  Lombroso  calls  attention  to  the  fact  that, 
while  their  elders  take  all  sorts  of  pains  to  teach  the  young 
child  words,  little  or  no  effort  is  made  to  help  or  to  instruct  it 
in  the  use  of  gesture-language,  which  for  the  young  human 
being,  as  for  primitive  man,  is,  at  first,  the  nature  mode  of 
expressing  needs  and  feelings  (369,  p.  4).  The  author  con- 
siders that  '  the  gesture  of  negation  springs  from  the  natural 
way  the  child  has  of  removing  his  head  laterally  from  the 
breast  when  he  no  longer  desires  milk,  that  of  assent  being 
derived  from  the  infant's  action  in  moving  his  head  up  and 
down  when  he  seeks  the  nipple.'  The  gesture  of  protruding 
the  lips,  so  as  to  claim  attention,  is  attributed  to  the  'instinc- 
tive movement  of  protruding  the  lips  in  order  to  eat.'  She 
adopts  Preyer's  explanation  of  the  joining  of  the  hands  when 
requesting  anything,  '  because  in  the  act  of  prehension  the 
hands  are  extended,  and,  in  order  to  take  the  object  desired, 
surround  it,  and  are  united.'  The  child  uses  gesture  first  to 
express  his  thoughts  and  feelings,  because  it  is  at  the  same 
time  tlie  quickest  and  the  least  fatiguing  method,  and,  'when 
later  he  abandons  gesture  for  speech,  it  is  as  a  matter  of 
economy  (through  the  law  of  least  effort),  because  the  words 
we  have  continually  used  in  his  presence  and  hearing  have 
become  familiar  to  him,  and  he  is  now  able,  by  their  means, 
'to  express  with  greater  ease  and  precision  a  large  number  of 
facts  and  sensations'  (369,  p.  170).  Much  later  in  life  many 
individuals  for  the  same  reason  adopt  written  language  as  the 
means  of  expressing  themselves  best  and  most  satisfactorily. 
Some  few  others,  more  highly  favoured,  find  in  poetry  alone 
the  needed  channel  in  which  their  thought  can  most  freely 
and  securely  flow ;  and,  again,  genius  has  often  selected  some 
special  form  of  poetry  whereby  to  picture  forth  its  thoughts 
and  its  dreams. 

Onomatopoeia  a?id  the  Origin  of  Latiguage. — The  speech  of 
little  children  has  always  been  a  source  of  wonderment  to 
man,  and  Psammetichus,  King  of  Egypt  (d.  610  B.C.),  was  not 
the  only  investigator  who  turned  to  childhood  for  the  solution 


114  THE   CHILD 

of  the  problem  of  language  origins.  Psammetichus,  so  Hero- 
dotus tells  us,  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  oldest  language 
on  the  face  of  the  earth  was  the  Phrygian,  because  two  chil- 
dren, isolated  by  his  orders,  spoke  first  the  word  bekos,  which 
in  that  tongue  signified  '  bread.'  I'arrar,  who  accepts  the 
story,  says  that  bckos  (minus  the  Greek  -os)  is  merely  a  child's 
onomatopoeic  rendering  of  the  bleating  of  a  goat,  which, 
indeed,  is  possible,  since  the  children  were  under  the  care 
of  a  shepherd.  We  may  here,  Farrar  thinks,  find  the  record 
of  two  very  interesting  facts,  viz.,  '  that  the  children  first 
named  animals,  and  tliat  the  name  given  was  onomatopoeic 
or  imitative  of  the  sounds  uttered  by  the  creature  named.' 
Long  after  the  Egyptian's  experiment  we  have  mention  of 
similar,  but  somewhat  discredited,  investigations  by  Frederick 
II.  (i  194-1250)  of  Germany  and  James  IV.  (1473-1513)  of 
Scotland.  Whatever  their  authenticity  may  be  these  stories 
are  of  historical  interest,  as  evidencing  at  least  a  suspicion 
that  the  origin  and  growth  of  child-speech  stood  in  some  re- 
lation to  the  development  of  human  language  (194,  p.  12). 
A  very  good  sketch  of  the  onomatopoeic  theory  of  the  origin 
of  language,  as  set  forth  by  various  ancient  and  modern  writers, 
will  be  found  in  Regnaud  (530),  while  the  evidence  in  its 
support  is  exhaustively  treated  by  Canon  Farrar  in  his 
Chapters  on  Language  (194),  in  connection  with  which  ought 
to  be  read  Trumbull's  brief  discussion  of  some  of  these  data 
(649),  and  Wedgewood's  in  the  introduction  to  his  Dictiotiary 
of  Etiglish  Etymology  (678).  Of  special  value  are  the  thorough- 
going articles  by  Dr  J.  Owen  Dorsey  on  '  Siouan  Onomatopes ' 
(173),  H.  T.  Peck  on  'Onomatopoeia  in  Some  West  African 
Languages '  (482),  and  Mr  W,  G.  Aston  on  *  Japanese  Onoma- 
topes and  the  Origin  of  Language'  (16).  That  onomatopoeia 
has  played  a  considerable  part  in  the  evolution  of  the  earliest 
human  forms  of  speech,  as  it  now  does  in  the  language  of 
early  childhood,  is  doubtless  true,  but  its  importance  has  not 
always  been  of  the  first  order. 

Japanese  Onomatopes. — Mr  W.  G.  Aston,  following  up  a 
suggestion  of  Dr  E.  B.  Tylor  as  to  the  need  for  'a  classified 
collection  of  words  with  any  strong  claim  to  be  self-expressive,' 
has,  in  his  paper  on  'Japanese  Onomatopes  and  the  Origin  of 
Language,'  studied  in  detail  the  onomatopoeic  element  in  the 
Japanese  tongue.  The  conclusions  at  which  he  arrives  are  as 
follows  (16,  p.  352)  : — 


THE   LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD  II5 

1.  The  first  speech  of  mankind  consisted  of  natural  cr'es — 
shouts,  grunts  and  hisses.  These  were  developed  into  inter- 
jections (Oh  !  No  !  Hush  !)  by  a  two-fold  process.  The  ideas 
become  more  distinct  and  definite,  and  the  sounds,  at  first 
differentiated  only  by  tone,  became  articulate. 

2.  From  such  interjections  there  have  been  derived  a  very 
considerable  proportion  of  the  grammatical  forms  and  particles 
of  the  Japanese  language,  such  as  case  signs,  honorific  and 
interrogative  particles,  the  signs  of  the  indicative  (?),  optative 
conditional  and  imperative  moods,  and  of  the  causative  (?) 
and  negative  verbs.  A  good  many  words  of  the  general 
vocabulary  may  be  traced  to  the  same  origin. 

3.  A  further  stage  in  the  development  of  language  consists 
in  the  imitation  of  such  nonsignificant  vocal  sounds  and 
motions  as  blowing,  spitting,  gulping  and  coughing. 

4.  It  is  here  that  mankind  found  a  model  for  the  mute 
consonants. 

5.  It  was  also  at  this  stage  that  the  imitations  of  motions 
by  motions  of  the  organs  of  speech  began. 

6.  In  onomatopoeia  mute  consonants  are  usually  expres- 
sive of  motion,  vowels  and  nasals  of  sound,  the  aspirates 
occupying  an  intermediate  position. 

7.  Ordinary  onomatopes,  such  as  rat-tat,  bow-wow,  etc., 
are  of  late  origin,  and  can  throw  little  light  on  the  genesis 
of  speech. 

8.  Letter  correspondence  in  like  onomatopes  of  the  same 
or  different  languages  follows  the  classification  into  mutes, 
aspirates  and  nasals.  It  is  only  where  there  is  some  special 
reason  that  the  variations  occur  between  sounds  made  by 
the  same  organ  of  speech  as  in  ordinary  philology. 

It  is  quite  evident  that  the  onomatopoeic  words  of  many 
savage  peoples  are  of  too  aitificial  and  intellectual  a  sort  to  be 
compared  with  the  few  instinctive  imitations  of  uninfluenced 
childhood. 

Australian  Onomatopoeia. — That  there  is  a  great  variety  in 
the  onomatopoeic  or  imitative  words  of  the  lowest  races  of  man 
—  a  much  greater  variety  than  can  be  said  to  exist  in  the  early 
speech  of  the  human  child — is  evident  from  a  careful  study  of 
their  language.  In  the  different  Australian  dialects,  e.g.,  we 
find  the  following  words  (among  others)  for  'laugh':  waler, 
krambalwert,  kangalla,  gooryman,  kinka,  tirrikeblin,  munka,  yie, 
munjur,  kind!  pillia,  karibok,  ginthinthintha,  wathiman,  yathin, 

9 


u6 


THE   CHILD 


etc. ;  and  among  American  Indian  tribes  the  following  names 
for  the  'butterfly':  tletlu,  lolenu,  kolilu,  walwilekash,  kepkap, 
wekwak,  etc. ;  and  in  Australia  :  billybyleukka,  coolumbria, 
booroo  booroo,  balumbir,  etc.  So,  also,  there  is  immense 
variety  in  the  words  for  'yes'  and  'no'  among  the  Australian 
and  other  primitive  languages,  com[jlc\ity  being  often  found 
where  least  e\i)ected,  and  simplicity  where  it  might  not  be 
looked  for. 

It  is  fair,  however,  to  say  that,  with  respect  to  human 
noises  and  movements  especially,  the  Australians  (and  some 
other  primitive  races  as  well,  like  the  Fanti)  evidence  great 
skill  in  onomatopoeic  imitation.  The  Dieyerie  language  of 
South  Australia,  <'.,{,''.,  has  many  very  expressive  words  of  this 
sort  (136,  II.  p.  89),  such,  e.g.,  as  the  following: — 

Dumb. 

Itching. 

TroUing  pace. 

Mimicking  for  the  purpose  of  joking. 

A  ball,  played  \sitli  b\-  children. 

Round. 

Laugh. 

Yes. 

Very  crooked. 

Rustling  or  whirring  noise  caused  by  birds  rising. 

A  grunting  noise. 

Ejaculation  to  warn  from  danger. 

Slowly,  gently.     {Kulie=ennigh  ?). 

Shaking. 

Blaze,  flame. 

Directly. 

Feeling  with  the  hands,  groping  in  dark.     Kurra  = 

feeling. 
Circle,  current  in  a  stream. 
Disabled,  deformed. 
Talkative,  gambling. 
Mirage. 

Continually  repeating,  reiterating. 
Be  quick,  hasten. 
Hard,  tough,  strong. 
Groping  in  any  enclosed  space  with  the  hands 

for  anything. 
Noise  caused  by  birds  settling  on  land  or  water. 
Ticklish. 
To  put  the  tongue  out  of  the  mouth  to  denote 

that  the  person  who  does  so  is  only  jesting. 
Walking  softly  on  tip-toe  to  surprise. 
Walking  stealthily  so  as  not  to  disturb  prey. 
Itch. 


Apooapoo 

Boonoonoo 

Bunyabunyina 

Chandachanduna 

Chuboochuboo 

Doomoodomoora 

Kinka 

Kookoo 

Koodakoodarie 

Koongarra 

Koonkana 

Kubbou 

Kulkulie 

Kunthakunthuna 

Ku  rumba 

Kurrurrie 

Kurrakurrana 

Moonyirrie 

Mooromooroo 

Munumuruna 

Nillanilla 

Nokooloonokoloo 

Nooroonooroo 

Oorooooroo 

Pirrakuna 

Piyacooduna 

Thitti 

Thuliekirra 

Thunijjuna 

Thumpathumpuna 
■\Vittcha 


THE   LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD  II7 

Wittwittuna  =     Roaring  of  thunder. 

Yelyelkaroo  =     Hysterics  (with  women). 

Vikyillarie  =      Hysterics  after  excessive  laughter. 

Variety  in  Onoinatupaia. — Such  words  partake,  too,  in 
distinct  or  indistinct  fashion  of  the  genius  of  the  language 
to  which  they  belong ;  and  in  such  languages  at  least  as  those 
treated  of  by  Dr  Dorsey  serve  more  as  formative  elements  of 
the  vocabulary  than  do,  generally,  the  onomatopoeias  of  chil- 
dren ;  the  latter  have,  in  fact,  a  species  of  deadness  about 
them  or  a  servile  kind  of  imitation  that  the  speech  of  primitive 
peoples  often  does  not  possess  at  all.  There  is  usually  more 
life  and  body  to  the  onomatopes  of  savages  than  to  those  of 
civilised  children ;  only  in  their  '  original  languages,'  those 
they  create  for  themselves,  do  we  meet  with  the  real  corre- 
spondences of  savage  onomatopes.  Children  alone,  who  were 
capable  of  creating  words  like  bojizvassis,  '  the  feeling  you  have 
just  before  you  jump,  don't  you  know — when  you  mean  to 
jump  and  want  to  do  it,  and  are  just  a  little  bit  afraid  to  do 
it'  (296,  p.  108),  could  compete  with  the  originators  of  many 
of  the  onomatopes  of  primitive  tongues.  The  child  is  re- 
pressed by  the  necessity  of  taking  on  the  language  of  his 
elders  before  he  has  either  the  opportunity  or  the  requirement 
to  create  onomatopes  like  the  following,  cited  by  Dr  Dorsey, 
from  various  dialects  of  the  Siouan  stock  of  American  Indian 
languages:  A7/<z-^/m '^  =' the  sound  made  in  brushing  against 
or  pulling  through  sunflowers,  grass  or  leaves';  6'-)-^' the 
sound  of  ice  breaking  up  and  floating  off,  or  that  of  a  steady 
rain';  ^a/a-M/='the  sound  heard  when  a  tree  is  struck  with 
an  axe  in  cold  weather ' ;  dhi-khdha  "  ^zhe=^  the  crunching  sound 
heard  when  a  sled  is  pulled  over  firm  snow  on  a  frosty 
morning.' 

In  the  simpler  sort  of  onomatopes  :  Hu,  '  to  bark  like  a  dog 
or  a  wolf;  s'u,  'the  sound  of  planing';  K-u-,  'the  noise  of  a 
gun,'  etc.,  the  Siouan  Indian  is  much  nearer  the  child.  With 
the  adult  civilised  individual  the  cultivated  imagination  comes 
to  the  rescue — three  young  men,  e.g.,  asked  to  state  what  sound 
was  suggested  to  them  by  the  letter  group  giab,  answered, 
respectively,  'Dropping  of  something  semi-liquid,'  'croaking 
of  a  frog,'  'clapping  of  hands  together'  (109,  p.  117) — though 
not  a  little  of  the  old  onomatopoeic  art  lies  dormant  even  here. 
With  adults  of  the  present  day,  however,  the  exercise  of 
onomatopoeia  is  interpretative  rather  than  creative.     Sir  Daniel 


Il8  THE   CHILD 

Wilson  records  the  following  interesting  observations  of  Ameri- 
can Indians  as  to  certain  onomatopoeias  :  ^  '  Oronyhateka,  an 
educated  Moliawk  Indian,  in  replying  to  some  (jueries  ad- 
dressed to  hiin  relative  to  his  native  language,  thus  writes  me 
in  reference  to  the  CaJ>rimii/<^us  vocifcrus  or  whip  [)oor-will : 
"When  I  listen  with  my  Indian  ears,  it  seems  to  me  utterly 
impossible  to  form  any  other  word  from  an  imitation  of  its 
notes  than  kwa-kor-yeuh,  but  when  I  put  on  my  English  ears 
I  hear  the  bird  quite  distinctly  saying  whip-poor-will.'' 
Assickanack,  an  educated  Odahwah  Indian,  wrote  the  same 
cry,  heard  nightly  throughout  the  summer  in  the  American 
forests,  wah-oo  naJi ;  and  an  Englishman,  recently  arrived  in 
Canada,  who  listened  to  the  cry  for  the  first  time,  without 
being  aware  of  the  popular  significance  attached  to  it,  wrote  it 
down,  at  my  request,  chpoo-7vch.'  The  present  writer,  when 
among  the  Kootenays  of  South-Eastern  British  Columbia  in 
the  summer  of  1891,  found  that,  when  he  tried  to  think  in  the 
Indian  language,  the  cry  of  the  owl  seemed  to  be  k'sitlkinetl 
piillke,  as  the  Kootenays  render,  but  on  relapsing  into  English 
it  was  unmistakably  the  familiar  tu-whit-tu-whit-tu-ivhu.  The 
whippoorwill  was  certainly  not  the  first  thing  named  by  the 
American  Indians,  or  the  frog  by  the  Pacific  Islanders ;  and 
the  fact  that  their  language  had  already  taken  some  sort  of 
shape  before  these  onomatccpic  names  were  invented,  more 
than  any  actual  difference  in  the  cries  of  the  creatures  them- 
selves, must  account  for  the  different  words  used  to  name  the 
whippoorwill,  which  Dr  Gatschet  has  noted  among  various 
Indian  tribes,  and  for  the  different  onomatopoeic  names  recorded 
by  Dr  Guppy  as  existing  among  the  Solomon  Islanders,  Aus- 
tralians, Malays,  etc. 

Development  of  La?iguage  from  the  Cry. — According  to 
V.  Henri  (29,3,  p.  27),  there  exists,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
anatomy  and  physiology,  'only  a  quantitative  difference 
between  the  language  of  animals  and  the  speech  of  man,  the 
latter  possessing  a  much  more  extensive  register  and  an 
infinitely  more  varied  timbre  and  articulation.'  The  problem 
of  the  origin  of  language  may  thus  be  not  a  linguistic  one,  but 
'  a  chapter  of  comparative  anatomy  (articulation)  and  of  pure 
physiology  (rudimentary  exercise  of  faculty).' 

Lefevre  (352,  p.  42)  thus  sketches  the  development  of 
human  speech  from  the  cry  to  the  grammatical  categories  : 
1  Preh.  Man.,  3rd  Ed.,  Vol.  II.  p.  365. 


THE   LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD  119 

'  Animals  possess  two  of  the  important  elements  of  language — 
the  spontaneous  reflex  cry  of  emotion  or  need,  the  voluntary 
cry  of  warning,  threat  or  summons.  From  these  two  sorts  of 
utterance,  man,  endowed  already  with  a  richer  vocal  apparatus 
and  a  more  developed  brain,  evolved  numerous  varieties  by 
means  of  stress,  reduplication,  intonation.  The  warning  or 
summoning  cry,  the  germ  of  the  demonstrative  roots,  is  the 
parent  of  the  names  of  numbers,  sex  and  distance ;  the 
emotional  cry,  of  which  our  simple  interjections  are  but  the 
relics,  in  combination  with  the  demonstratives,  prepares  the 
outlines  of  the  sentence,  and  already  represents  the  verb  and 
the  names  of  states  or  actions.  Imitation,  direct  or  symbolical, 
and  necessarily  only  approximative  of  the  sounds  of  external 
nature,  i.e.^  onomatopceia,  furnished  the  elements  of  the 
attributive  roots,  from  which  arise  the  names  of  objects, 
special  verbs  and  their  derivatives.  Analogy  and  metaphor 
complete  the  vocabulary,  applying  to  the  objects  discerned  by 
touch,  sight,  smell  and  taste  qualifying  adjectives  derived  from 
onomatopoeia.  Reason  then  coming  into  play  rejects  the 
greater  part  of  this  unmanageable  wealth,  and  adopts  a  certain 
number  of  sounds  which  have  already  been  reduced  to  a  vague 
and  generic  sense ;  and  by  derivation,  composition  and  affixes, 
the  root  sounds  produce  those  endless  families  of  words,  related 
to  each  other  in  every  degree  of  kindred,  from  the  closest  to 
the  most  doubtful,  which  grammar  finally  ranges  in  the  cate- 
gories known  as  the  parts  of  speech.' 

But  one  can  dogmatise  only  with  danger  here.  Sex  has 
been  thought  responsible  for  some  of  the  shaping  and  beauti- 
fying of  language  among  men,  as  it  certainly  has  among  the 
animals.  Love  made  the  first  poet  when  every  word  was  a 
poem,  and  all  speech,  perhaps,  chaotically  musical.  It  is  a 
long  step  from  the  mutual  calls  of  animals  to  the  languages 
which  whole  peoples  now  use  in  international  correspondence. 

The  influence  of  the  sex-instinct  in  the  formation  or 
shaping  of  language  is  well  seen  at  about  the  time  of 
puberty,  when  the  '  nonsense-talk '  of  lovers  is  so  apt  to  be 
indulged  in,  and  when  even  entirely  new  languages  are  some- 
times invented  and  used  for  a  considerable  period.  In  other 
respects  the  relation  of  child  and  mother  has  probably  always 
been  the  chief  factor  in  the  production  of  language,  and 
women  and  children  are  still,  in  the  naive  way,  the  typical 
users  of  language. 


120  THE   CHILD 

Regnaud  (530),  too,  takes  the  cry  as  the  point  of  departure 
for  the  history  of  the  human  mind  as  written  in  language.  In 
the  beginning,  apparently,  an  ensemble  of  fav(jurable  circum- 
stances caused  the  cry  (now  understood  by  consciousness)  to 
pass  from  the  instinctive  to  the  rational  state,  and  to  become 
significant.  One  can  hardly  maintain,  as  some  have  done, 
that  the  cry  was  the  creator  of  consciousness. 

According  to  Zanardelli  ihe  language-unit  is  the  interjec- 
tion, which  never  really  becomes  a  word,  and  never  can  be 
etymologised  into  a  root  and  its  prefix  or  suffix.  From  this 
point  of  view  the  great  problem  of  early  man  was  how  to 
pass  from  interjection  and  imitative  cries  to  'roots.'  The 
mechanism  of  an  interjection,  which  is,  so  to  speak,  'the 
heart  of  language,'  lies  more  in  the  intonation  than  in  the 
sound  itself;  ah  I  for  example,  may  signify  'pain,  pleasure, 
surprise,  fear,  admiration,  reproof,'  etc.  The  intonation  which 
gave  life  to  the  original  interjections  still  survives  to  give 
difi'erent  meanings  to  real  words  (693).  The  psychology  of 
the  interjection  has  yet  to  be  written. 

Language  used  to  Domeslic  Animals. — Some  interesting 
facts  in  connection  with  the  history  of  the  cry  may  be  gleaned 
from  the  study  of  the  'language  used  to  domestic  animals,' 
an  exhaustive  account  of  which  has  recently  been  published 
by  Dr  H.  Carrington  Bolton  of  New  York.  'The  terms 
used  in  calling  them,'  says  Dr  Bolton  (65,  p.  113),  'are 
generally  corruptions  of  the  ancient  names  of  the  animals 
themselves  (sometimes  with  a  prefix,  as  "come"),  and  the  rest 
of  the  language  is  made  up  of  obsolete  expressions  originally 
forming  part  of  ordinary  speech  in  the  infancy  of  its  develop- 
ment, which  have  been  preserved  through  this  special  usage, 
together  with  inarticulate  sounds  and  calls  having  their  origin 
in  the  attempt  of  man  to  lower  his  language  to  the  com- 
prehension of  the  domesticated  animals,  and  to  imitate  their 
own  cries.  All  these  words  are  subject  to  the  same  influences 
that  lead  to  the  development  of  dialects,  thus  producing 
transformations  not  easily  traced ;  moreover,  these  changes 
are  quite  radical,  inasmuch  as  the  language  is  unwritten,  and 
is  perpetuated  only  by  the  lore  of  thcy^//t.' 

A  very  important  feature  of  the  language  under  con- 
sideration is  'the  musical  intonation,  which  gives  to  each 
cry  a  special  character,  having  great  influence  with  the  animals 
addressed.'     In  calling,  e.g.,  an  animal  from  a  distance,  'the 


THE   LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD 


i:2i 


cry  becomes  a  loud  shout  in  a  shrill  key,  and  greatly 
prolonged,'  while,  if  the  animal  is  close  by,  '  the  same  term 
is  uttered  in  a  soft,  low  tone,  and  coaxingly.'  This  intonation 
is  almost  an  art  by  itself,  and  one  may  coiiipare  it  with  the 
'calls 'of  children  on  the  street,  the  'cries'  of  hawkers  and 
pedlars,  and  other  more  primitive  forms  of  speech,  where  the 
same  device  is  largely  employed. 

The  Spanish  proverb,  '  It  is  useless  to  call  tits-tus  to  an 
old  dog,'  exemplifies  another  aspect  of  this  somewhat  ancient 
language,  for  old  animals  and  young  animals  have  very 
frequently  entirely  different  call-words.  In  Lettish,  e.g.,  dogs 
are  called  with  kuis  /  kuts !  and  puppies  with  tschu  !  tschn  ! 
In  Illyria  dogs  are  driven  away  with  os !  or  cuke!  puppies 
with  sibe  !  and  Lithuanian  shepherds  call  sheep  Avilh  ait,  ait! 
lambs  with  burr !  burr  ! 

It  is  worthy  of  note  also  that  some  children's  names  for 
domesticated  animals  are  closely  related  to  the  corresponding 
call-words,  e.g.,  the  word  Jiiiz-paert,  used  by  children  in 
Oldenburg,  consists  of /at'/-/ (' horse ')  and  hitz,  the  call-word 
for  that  animal.  This  appears  clearly  also  in  the  following  list 
of  children's  nicknames  and  call-words  for  animals  in  the  Saxon 
Erzgebirge,  which  Dr  Bolton  cites  from  Gu^pfert  (65,  p.  68) : — 


Animal. 

Children's  Nickname. 

Call-Word. 

Cow 

Goat 

Pig 

Cat 

Goose 

Chicken 

Hen 

mutschl 

hapl 

boschl 

mizl 

liwl 

zipl 

bull 

mfitschl,  miitsch 
hapl,  hap,  hap 
boschl,  bosch,  bosch 
miz,  hiz,  hiz 
liwl,  lib,  lib 
zipl,  zip,  zip 
butl,  but,  but 

Dr  Bolton  (65,  p.  66)  calls  attention  to  the  fact  that  the 
dog  has  been  highly  favoured  by  man,  who  'pays  an  uncon- 
scious tribute  to  the  intelligence  of  his  faithful  companion  by 
addressing  him  with  words  of  ordinary  speech,'  while  for  the 
other  domestic  animals  (horses,  cattle,  sheep,  swine,  poultry, 
etc.)  he  employs  'a  variety  of  singular  terms  never  used  in 
speaking  to  his  fellows;  these  comprise  inarticulate  sounds 
and   musical  calls,   besides  whistling,   chirping,  clicking,  and 


122  THE   CHILD 

Other  sounds  not  easily  represented  by  any  combination  of 
letters  of  the  English  alphabet,  nor  by  musical  notation.'  No 
careful  observations  have  yet  been  made  of  the  conduct  of 
children  in  this  matter.  To  other  animals  than  the  dog,  just 
as  to  his  own  infant,  man  seems  to  prefer  to  use  a  sort  of 
speech  which,  as  Dr  Bolton  remarks,  is  '  baby-talk '  of  an 
outre  type.  It  is,  however,  a  curious  fact  that,  for  the 
benefit  of  man's  first  pet,  his  human  cliild,  one  sort  of  '  baby- 
talk  '  was  devised,  and  for  his  second,  the  domesticated  pet 
animal,  another. 

Another  fact,  paralleled  also  in  the  beginnings  of  speech 
in  the  human  individual,  is  brought  out  by  this  author,  who 
observes  :  '  Since  the  same  sound  is  used  in  Germany  to  stop 
horses  as  is  used  in  Italy  to  start  them,  viz.,  brrrr,  it  is  con- 
ceivable that  an  Italian  horse  transported  to  Germany  might 
bolt  in  response  to  the  Teutonic  command  to  stop.  Several 
reversals  of  this  character  have  been  reported  to  me ;  the 
click,  xlk,  used  to  start  horses  in  the  United  States  is  em- 
ployed to  stop  them  in  India ;  the  chirp,  psp^  used  in  the 
United  States  to  urge  horses  forward  is  used  to  stop  them  in 
South  Africa ;  and  the  hue  and  dia,  used  in  France  to  direct 
animals  to  the  right  and  left  respectively,  are  said  by  the 
lexicographers,  Malin,  Pictet  and  Littre,  to  be  employed  in 
the  reverse  sense  in  Switzerland.' 

Somewhat  similar  contradictions  are  found  in  the  gestures 
and  customs  of  courtesy  of  various  peoples,  and  in  the  corre- 
sponding actions  of  children.  How  some  of  them  may  have 
arisen,  or  been  perpetuated,  may,  perhaps,  be  seen  from  the 
following  account;  given  by  Colonel  Mallery,  of  the  origin  of 
two  mistakes  in  salutation  :  '  U'he  Chinese  in  Utah  fell  into 
a  curious  blunder  in  using  some  of  our  phrases.  On  meeting 
a  resident  at  any  time  of  day  or  night  they  called  out  "good- 
morning  !  "  and,  on  parting,  "good-night!"  even  if  it  was 
before  breakfast.  A  similar  error  in  imitation  was  made  by 
the  Zuni.  When  the  officers  from  Fort  Wingate  visited  the 
Pueblo,  they  were  naturally  anxious  to  reach  the  traders'  store, 
so  they  called  out  to  the  first  person  they  met,  "How are  you? 
Where's  the  store  ?  "  The  Zuni  caught  up  all  the  sounds  as 
one  greeting,  and,  in  the  kindness  of  their  hearts,  shouted 
them  to  all  subsequent  visitors.  The  salutation,  "  How  are 
you?  Give  me  a  match  ! "  has  a  like  explanation.'^ 
^  Amer,  Anthro/>.,  Vol.  III.  p.  206. 


TKE   LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD  1 23 

In  many  parts  of  the  world,  with  the  introduction  of  the 
horse  and  other  domestic  animals,  have  gone  the  call-words  of 
the  people  introducing  them.  In  Hawaii,  e.g.,  English  call- 
words  are  used.  So,  too,  the  Cairo  donkeys  '  know  the  English 
stop,  which  the  boy-drivers  now  use,'  and  Bulgarian  horses 
'the  Turkish  o-Zr/-,  "back."'  Moreover,  some  animal-trainers 
are  said  to  use  only  French  words  in  addressing  their  animals. 

Animals  seem  to  resemble  children  in  the  readiness  with 
which  they  come  to  recognise  varieties  of  intonation,  change 
from  one  language  to  another,  and  in  their  early  life  differ  from 
their  latter  years  in  the  nature  of  the  speech-forms  which  they  can 
appreciate.  Some  more  evidence  of  like  import  may  be  expected 
from  the  study  of  the  cries  to  wild  animals  among  savages. 

The  ^ Hearer^  in  Language. — Dr  Lukens  (377,  p.  443)  calls 
attention  to  the  fact  that  in  most,  if  not  all  the  current  discus- 
sions of  the  origin  of  language,  the  hearer  is  entirely  ignored, 
although  '  the  question  of  what  sounds  will  attract  the  attention 
of,  and  be  understood  by,  the  hearer  is  at  least  as  important 
a  question  as  what  sounds  the  speaker  will  naturally  make ' ; 
the  onomatopoeia  will  need  to  be  for  the  hearer  as  well  as  for 
the  speaker,  as  evidenced  by  the  hunter's  use  of  the  calls  or 
warning  sounds  of  animals,  etc.,  '  the  sounds  to  which  they 
give  heed,  and  therefore  the  first  to  which  they  attach  mean- 
ing.' According  to  Dr  Lukens,  the  case  is  similar  'when  the 
mother  or  nurse  imitates-  the  child's  babble  and  says, 
"papapa,"  or  "mamamama,"  or  "baby."'  All  such  words, 
together  with  '  all  the  original  words  for  food  '  noted  by  various 
writers,  '  are  mere  natural  sounds  that  come  to  have  a  meaning 
by  the  fact  that  the  parents  or  others  adopt  them,  and  accept 
their  use  by  the  child,  who  thus  gradually  associates  meaning 
with  them.  It  is  well  known  that  these  same  sounds  occur  in 
nearly  all  languages,  but  the  meaning  varies,  especially  among 
savage  languages,  although  always  pertaining  either  to  the 
child,  or  parents,  or  food,  or  other  necessity  of  the  early 
months  of  life.  Baby-talk  is  of  the  rankest  growth  among 
savages,  and  undoubtedly  played  a  greater  role  in  the  past 
than  it  does  at  present,  being  now  so  far  extinguished  by  the 
greater  necessity  of  conformity  to  adult  usage.'  Somewhat 
similar  views  were  reached  by  Brinton  in  his  paper  on  'The 
Physiological  Correlation  of  certain  Linguistic  Radicals,'  where 
he  thus  explains  the  origin  and  widespread  character  of  such 
'  physonyms '  as  mama,  nana,  ana,  papa,  baba,  fata  :  '  In  the 


124  THE   CHILD 

infant's  first  attempt  to  utter  articulate  sounds,  the  consonants 
m,  p  and  /  decidedly  preponderate ;  and  the  natural  vowel  a, 
associated  with  these,  yields  the  child's  first  syllables.  It 
repeats  such  sounds  as  ma-ma-ma  or  pa-pa-pa  without  attach- 
ing any  meaning  to  them  ;  the  parents  apply  these  sounds  to 
themselves,  and  thus  impart  to  them  their  signification ' 
(p.  cxxxiii.).  In  this  way  have  arisen  certain  personal  pronouns, 
demonstratives,  locatives,  words  of  direction  and  indication, 
whose  radicals  are  these  and  kindied  consonants,  thus  ac- 
counting for  a  surprising  similarity  in  the  phonetic  constitution 
of  many  of  these  words  in  innumerable,  unrelated  families  of 
speech  all  over  the  globe. 

Reduplication. — Reduplication,  in  primitive  tongues,  is  not 
by  any  means  the  very  simple  thing  that  some  writers  about 
child-language  have  made  it  out  to  be.  Says  Dr  A.  S. 
Gatschet  ^  :  '  One  of  the  most  ancient  features  of  an  Indian 
language  is  reduplication  for  inflectional  purposes.  In  this  we 
observe  a  thorough  difference  between  Maskoki  and  the  lan- 
guages west  of  the  Mississippi  River.  In  Maskoki  the  second 
syllable  is  the  reduplicated  one  in  adjectives  and  verbs ;  west 
of  the  river,  at  least  in  Tonika,  Atakapa  and  Tonkawe,  it  is 
the  first  one.  Linguists  able  to  appreciate  this  circumstance 
fully  will  not  deny  that  it  is  of  great  weight  in  separating 
certain  classes  of  linguistic  families  from  each  other,  and 
consequently  in  assigning  them  different  areas  in  primordial 
epochs.  The  Sahaptin  and  Dakota  excepted,  no  other  lin- 
guistic family  of  North  America  is  known  to  me  which  redupli- 
cates for  inflectional  (not  for  derivational)  purposes  in  the  same 
manner  as  Maskoki.' 

As  a  means  of  forming  the  plural  from  the  singular  redupli- 
cation is  known  to  many  primitive  American  tongues,  e.g.., 
Tsimshian,  Kwakiutl,  Nahuatl,  which  others,  equally  primitive, 
such  as  the  Kootenay,  know  nothing  about  in  this  connection, 
just  as  many  languages  are  unacquainted  with  the  Aryan  device  of 
forming  the  preterite  of  verbs  by  reduplication.  And  the  modified 
forms  of  reduplication  are  by  no  means  all  of  the  sort  represented 
by  the  first  word  of  three  syllables  coined  by  the  little  child 
of  Professor  Fe.xx\,  paiata  (combined  from  /ata  a.nd  papa). 

In  some  languages  reduplication  becomes  a  fine  art,  or  even 
a  science.  Among  the  hundreds  of  reduplicatives  existing  in 
the  Yoruba  (a  AV^est  African  language  of  very  primitive  charac- 
^  Migr.  Leg.  of  Creeks,  Vol.  II.  p.  71. 


THE   LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD  t2S 

ter),  we  meet  with  not  a  few  like  the  following  :  du-dii,  '  black ' ; 
fi-fit  'dimness';  fo-fo,  'glittering';  fu-fu,  'white';  ra-rd, 
'  loudly  ' ;  ya-ya,  '  nimbly,'  etc. — there  being  apparently  a 
very  strong  tendency  to  form  adverbs  relating  to  colour, 
motion,  etc.,  by  reduplication,  a  peculiarity  noticeable  also  in 
the  Fanti  language. 

This  use  of  reduplication  is  nowhere  better  seen  than  in 
the  Klamath,  an  Indian  language  of  Oregon,  the  grammar  and 
vocabulary  of  which  have  recently  been  most  carefully  studied 
by  Dr  A.  S.  Gatschet  (239).  The  following  examples  will 
illustrate  the  point : — Red  =  taktakli ;  Rough  =  kitchkitchli ; 
Slippery  =  laklakli ;  Smooth  =  tatatli ;  Strong  =  litchlitchli. 

The  law  of  least  effort  encourages  reduplication  in  child- 
speech,  but  environment  causes  it  to  be  almost  entirely  (with 
the  exception  of  a  few  imitated  or  suggested  onomatopoeias)  of 
the  nature  described  by  Dr  G.  Stanley  Hall  in  the  case  of  a 
young  boy  (269,  p.  133):  'Pleasure  was  often  found  in 
making  all  possible  noises  with  variations  of  pitch,  stress,  etc., 
but  whether  for  ears,  voice,  or  both,  none  can  say.  Often  the 
talking  of  adults  is  imitated  by  prolonged  jabbering,  as,  later, 
writing  is  imitated  by  prolonged  quiddling  with  a  pencil  before 
letters  are  known.  When  told  to  say  after  me  a  list  of  words 
of  two  syllables,  the  first  syllable  was  almost  always  repeated, 
e.g.,  Mary  was  wa-tva,  always  loudly  spoken,  for  she  was  a 
big,  loud-voiced  girl;  ]n\\di  =  du-du ;  Y\\.i\Q  =  th-th;  blanket  = 
ba-l?a  ;  faster  =/a  -fa  ;  master  =  ma-ina  ;  pasture  =  pa-pa  ; 
naughty  =  «a-«a,  etc'  These  imitative  reduplications  are 
very  common  among  children,  and  primitive  peoples  exhibit 
similar  phenomena. 

Child-Language  and Priviifive  Speech. — In  a  very  interesting 
article  on  '  The  Speech  of  Children,'  in  the  Nineteenth  Century 
for  May  1897,  Mr  S.  S.  Buckman  sets  forth  the  following 
theses,  which  he  supports  with  many  data  from  the  observation 
of  child-language  (90) : — i.  The  variations  of  human  lan- 
guages originated  in  the  imperfections  of  human  organs  of 
speech.  2.  All  human  language  could,  in  the  course  of  time, 
have  been  developed  from  the  variations  made  by  human 
beings  in  their  efforts,  first,  to  pronounce  one  original  word, 
then  to  speak  the  forms  this  word  assumed  by  such  treatment, 
and  so  on.  3.  Such  a  primordial  root  may  be  y^a^^  =' excre- 
ment, disgust.'  4,  The  infancy  of  speech  in  the  individual 
shows  what  was  the  infancy  of  speech  in  the  race.     5.  The 


126  THE  CHILD 

vocabulary  of  the  present-day  human  baby  at  twenty  nion'is 
old  approximately  represents  the  speech  of  adult  pre-human 
ancestors.  6.  The  speech,  with  all  its  imperfections,  of  a  three- 
year-old  child  would  be  about  the  attainment  of  primitive 
adult  human  speakers.  7.  The  speech  of  children,  the  slang  of 
the  play-ground  and  the  talk  of  the  street  may  all  be  studied 
for  the  better  understanding  of  the  genesis  of  human  speech. 

The  idea  that  through  the  attempt  to  pronounce  the  first 
word  (or  words),  and  through  imitation  of  the  variations  thereby 
produced,  the  variations  of  human  speech  (aided  by  the 
peculiarities  of  the  organs  of  speech  at  the  time)  arose,  is  a 
theory  not  nearly  so  ditificult  to  believe  as  the  view  that  the 
original  begetter  of  all  human  language  was  the  discomfort 
representing  'root  kak^  (cf.  Gr.  Kaxoc,  Latin  cacare,  and  /loc 
genus  omne),  out  of  which,  by  decapitation,  decaudation  and 
syncope  of  its  descendants,  the  world  of  speech  and  all  that 
therein  is  were  born  (cent  from  dakadakantam^  '  bike '  from 
bicycle,  blame  from  blasphema,  are  thought  to  point  the  ways  in 
which  such  things  were  accomplished).  Not  much  more 
satisfactory  would  be  the  development  of  '  the  three  roots  of 
Teutaryan  language — ma  ("mother"),  da  or  ta  ("father," 
"food"),  la  ("talk")' — out  of  the  ta-la-ma-da  series  of  the 
lullaby  talk  or  babbling  of  the  prattling  child. 

Whether  the  speech  of  a  twenty-months  old  human  child  lies 
nearer  to  that  of  '  adult  pre-human  ancestors '  than  the  speech 
of  a  three-year-old  to  that  of  '  primitive  adult  speakers '  is  a 
matter  that  calls  for  very  little  dogmatism,  although,  perhaps, 
we  underestimate  still  the  real  speech-capabilities  of  both  the 
last.  Buckman  is  upon  much  safer  ground  when  he  discusses 
the  facts  of  child-language  themselves  and  their  resemblances 
to  similar  facts  in  the  speech  of  primitive  peoples  (the  loss  of 
initial  or  final  s ;  the  change  of  medial  or  initial  s  to  h ;  the 
substitution  of  n  or  ng  for  /,  of  n  or  /  for  r ;  the  interchanging 
of  /  and  k,  d  and  g,  w  and  r,  s  and_/^  b  and/ ;  the  dropping  of 
initial  p ;  and  the  innumerable  seeming  oddities  which  lie  in 
the  child's  attempts  to  reproduce  the  words  and  sounds  used 
by  the  adults  and  others  of  his  environment).  Coincidences 
with  old  Irish,  the  classic  tongues,  Polynesian  dialects,  and 
American  or  Australian  primitive  languages,  are  certainly  by 
no  means  uncommon,  though  their  significance  is  apt  to  be 
much  exaggerated.  In  fact,  the  idea  suggests  itself  that  after 
all  the  child  may  be  as  imperfect  as  reproducer  of  past  human 


THE   LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD  127 

(or  pre-human)  speech  as  his  ma;igkool>e='ma.nte\p\ece'  and 
/Ma  =  ' scissors '  show  him  to  be  of  the  present  forms  of 
human  language.  His  invention  rather  than  his  imitation  ought 
to  be  the  prime  trait  allying  him  with  his  kin  of  long  ago. 

Following  up  a  rather  curious  paper  by  Alfred  Russell 
Wallace  (673),  in  which  is  exploited  the  relation  of  mouth- 
gesture  and  primitive  language,  Mr  Charles  Johnston,  starting 
from  the  premise  that  '  the  human  race  began  to  talk  as  babies 
begin  to  talk,'  with  the  corollary  that  '  in  the  prattle  of  every 
baby  we  have  a  repetition,  in  a  minor  key,  of  the  voice  of  the 
earliest  man,  and  by  watching  the  first  movements  of  speech 
in  a  baby  we  can  see  once  more  the  steps  in  articulate  language 
which  the  whole  world  of  man  once  took  in  dim  ages  long  ago  ' 
(319,  p.  499),  reaches  the  conclusion  that  'a  vast  period  of 
vowel-language  preceded  bya  long  interval  all  consonant  speech.' 
Voive/s  and  Consonants. — After  this  came  'a  transition 
period  of  great  wealth  and  variety,  where  breathings  and  semi- 
vowels were  added  to  pure  vowels  ;  then  arose  probably  nasals, 
and,  last  of  all,  pure  consonants.'  Of  this  vowel-speech  the 
author  maintains  that  'it  is  strictly  spontaneous,  from  within 
outwards ;  it  is  the  same  in  babies  of  different  lands,  whose 
parents  speak  entirely  different  languages'  (319,  p.  502). 

Here  again  the  author's  data  from  the  language  of  baby- 
hood are  more  convincing  than  his  citations  from  the  tongues 
of  primitive  peoples.  The  first  real  speech  may  have  arisen 
from  the  reduction  of  the  child's  a-a-a-a-a,  0-0-0-0-0,  u-u-ti,  etc., 
to  single  dimensions,  and  tata  may  be  one  of  the  omnilms-e\- 
pressions  of  early  human  speech,  but  the  statement  that  the 
Polynesian  language  represents  'the  second  period  of  baby 
talk,'  on  account  of  its  abundant  use  of  pure  vowels,  blinks 
the  notorious  fact  that  much  of  the  '  vocalic  character'  of  Poly- 
nesian dialects  is  due  to  omission  and  dropping  of  consonants, 
gutturals  especially — a  phenomenon  very  noticeable,  e.g.,  in 
the  language  of  Hawaii.  In  like  fashion  elimination  of  vowels 
has  given  to  some  other  primitive  tongues  a  very  '  consonantal 
character.'  These  historical  accidents  and  incidents  cannot, 
therefore,  be  made  the  basis  of  a  comparison  with  baby-speech. 
The  Polynesian  language,  e.g.,  is  not  'an  arrested  form  of 
baby-speech,'  nor  can  it  be  said  to  have  inherited  from  the 
distant  past  characters  which  it  has  only  recently  acquired. 
Similar  criticisms  apply  to  Mr  Johnston's  general  assertion  that 
'  the  speech  of  Polynesians,  Chinese  and  Negroes— of  the  red, 


128  THE   CHILD 

brown,  yellow  and  black  races — corresponds  to  definite  stages 
of  baby-talk.' 

According  to  C.  Crozat  Converse,^  who  lioMs  that  'music's 
mother-tone  is  man's  mother-tone,'  the  original  vowel  sound  is 
'  tlie  primitive  a  {ah),  the  first,  simplest,  easiest  of  all  vocal  utter- 
ances, the  onomatopic  vocable  for  mother.'  Further,  we  are 
told,  'man,  to  intensify  its  love-symbolism  in  verbal  expression, 
gave  it  the  verbo-consonantal  prefix,  in-ma,  and  children  verbally 
melodised  and  sweetened  this  symbolism  by  iteration,  inatfia.' 
The  meaning  of  this  mother-tone  is  thus  described:  'The 
mother-tone  a,  with  the  ma,  ha  of  every  baby,  white  or  black, 
bond  or  free,  born  of  ignorant  or  learned  parents,  of  the  baby 
of  all  nations  under  the  sun — this  cry  of  lamb,  kid,  calf,  with  its 
feline  and  canine  modifications,  is  one  of  those  germs  [tone- 
germs  found  not  only  in  the  voice  of  man  but  in  the  voices  of 
the  animal  kingdom],  one  which  expresses  a  crying  desire, 
the  immediate  satisfying  of  which  is  sought.'  Thus  in  the 
very  beginning  'onomatopy  demonstrates  the  synthesis  of 
man's  heart  with  man's  mind.' 

Some  writers  on  the  speech  of  early  childhood  have  not 
only  recognised  a  'pure  vowel  period,'  but  have  distinguished 
closely  the  times  of  appearance  of  the  individual  vowels 
(singly  and  in  combinations),  and  it  seems  to  be  generally 
admitted  that  vowels  precede  consonants.  The  differences  in 
individual  children  are,  however,  remarkable,  and  sufficient 
attention  has  not  yet  been  given  to  what  Dr  Lukens  has  styled 
'  mere  play  sounds,'  which,  during  the  first  year  of  childhood, 
*  are  perfectly  free,  now  exercising  the  lips,  now  the  tongue 
and  palate,  and  again  the  throat  parts,'  etc.  Out  of  the  rich- 
ness and  variety  of  this  '  primordial  babbling ' — to  use  Professor 
Sully's  term — 'a  rehearsal  for  the  difficult  performances  of 
articulate  speech,'  the  sounds  of  later  life  grow  by  laws  yet 
little  understood.  Preyer  inclines  strongly  to  this  view,  but 
Sully  is  rather  of  opinion  that  '  we  have  in  this  infantile 
"/a-/<?-ing"  more  a  rudiment  of  song  and  music  than  of 
speech,'  and  would  see  in  this  'voice-play,'  more  of  'a  rude, 
spontaneous  singing,'  which  prepares  the  way  for  the  pro- 
duction of  articulate  sounds.  He  finds  here  a  i-appi-ochement 
to  primitive  man  ;  '  the  rude  vocal  music  of  savages  consists  of 
a  similar  rhythmic  threading  of  meaningless  sounds,  in  which, 
as  in  this  infantile  song,  changes  of  feeling  reflect  themselves ' 
(621a,  p.  137). 

1  Monist,  Vol.  V.  p.  375. 


THE   LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD  1 29 

Thoroughgoing  scientific  studies  of  the  sounds  of  early 
child-speech  are  few  and  far  between,  though  Tracy,  Sully  and 
Lukens  have  not  a  little  to  say  on  the  subject  in  addition  to 
the  earlier  writers,  the  '  table  of  mispronounced  initial  sounds  ' 
given  by  the  last  being  of  special  value.  As  Dr  Lukens 
justly  observes  (377,  p.  453):  'A  little  child's  mispronuncia- 
tion is  rather  an  indistinctness  or  vagueness  of  utterance  than 
an  out-and-out  substitution  of  a  wrong  sound  for  a  right  one.' 
Professor  Sully  says  (621a,  p.  151):  'In  certain  cases  there 
seems  little  kinship  between  the  sounds  or  the  articulatory 
actions  by  which  they  are  produced.  At  the  early  stage,  more 
particularly,  almost  any  manageable  sound  seems  to  do  duty 
as  a  substitute.'  These  facts  seem  to  be  paralleled  by  certain 
phenomena  characteristic  of  not  a  few  primitive  tongues. 
According  to  Father  Montoya,  there  is  in  the  Guarani  language 
of  .South  America  'a  constant  changing  of  the  letters  for 
which  no  fixed  rules  can  be  given,'  and  Brinton  cites  from  the 
Araucanian  language  of  Chile,  fide  Dr  Darapsky,  the  per- 
mutation b  =  iv=f=u  =  i=g=gh==/ni  (73,  p.  398).  Brinton 
also  informs  us :  '  In  spite  of  the  significance  attached  to  the 
phonetic  elements,  they  are  in  many  American  languages 
vague  and  fluctuating.  If,  in  English,  we  were  to  pronounce 
the  three  words  lo//,  ?wr,  roll  indifferently,  as  one  or  the 
other,  you  see  what  violence  we  should  do  to  the  theory  of  our 
alphabet.  Yet  analogous  examples  are  constant  in  many 
American  langunges.  Their  consonants  are  "alternating"  in 
large  groups,  their  vowels  "  permutable."  M.  Petitot  calls 
this  phenomenon  "literal  affinity,"  and  shows  that,  in  the 
Tinne,  it  takes  place  not  only  between  consonants  of  the  same 
group,  the  labials,  for  instance,  but  of  different  groups,  as 
labials  with  dentals,  and  dentals  with  nasals.  These  differ- 
ences are  not  merely  dialectic ;  they  are  to  be  found  in  the 
same  village,  the  same  person.  They  are  not  peculiar  to  the 
Tinne  ;  they  recur  in  the  Klamath.' 

The  following  table  contains  the  order  of  frequency  as  initial 
sounds  of  the  principal  letters,  in  the  ordinary  English  Dictionary, 
in  the  child's  vocabulary  as  estimated  by  Prof.  Kirkpatrick  and 
Dr  Tracy,  and  by  the  present  writer  in  several  American-Indian 
languages,  in  the  Yoruba  of  West  Africa  and  the  Chinook 
Jargon.  The  number  of  words  examined  in  each  case  is 
sufficiently  large  to  determine  the  general  character  of  the 
language. 


130. 


THE  CHILD 


(0 -A  -v) q^'i 

-3u;.i  UI  jiiam 

■'13  P3'^\OJiO<J 

>.  X 

CD  -A  "V)  M«I 

-SUJl  UI  U13IU 

■*ia  3A!i<--N 

3    N 

(3  -d  -V) 

S 

(•3-.I-V)u^2 
-iff  Jioouiio 

rt 

£ 

o 

(3  -J   V) 

(3  'A  "V) 

rt                   -Z       -^              '^    „ 

CD  -A  -V) 

L'.WqifO 

(3  -A  -V) 

^CXciBc^-^-J:.^0>^<D 

(•3  -A  -V) 

i;io:|i;(j 

d,"*^* 

(-3  -it  -V) 

XbU3}005{ 

ri  ^  i/j  c  <-.  -n  US  >  >^-^  S  tj)--  cr-  w  0  a._c 

•(Xdcjx) 
XjBinquoo^ 
su3Jpi!q3 

■o                                                 O 

■(>lDUlBdj[JI"\}) 

AiE[nqE30jY 
su3JPl!q3 

t/5,r:  o  !i*j  ^'O  C-Cv+H  Krt  t/)C 

•(>13UlEd>l-II^) 

3osnji3 
uosuiqojj 

us    O    Oncf^^    u    S    U*--    ^^^.«    tiJO    C    3    > 

■(>ln[JJEd^l-II■^^) 

AjcuoipiQ 
qsiigug 

u)Ci,oci<--:k«£-o<+,<u.«—  t;3^o>c3 

•japjQ 

l-IHHI-l»-tl-H>-(l-HH4HHI-tC4 

•-1    N 

THE   LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD  13I 

This  table  illustrates  both  the  resemblances  and  the  differ- 
ences in  the  phonetics  of  primitive  languages  and  the  speech 
of  children.  We,  of  course,  have  no  details  as  to  the  child- 
vocabularies  of  the  primitive  peo[)Ies,  whose  languages  are  here 
represented,  but  it  is  very  probable  that  in  their  phonetics 
such  vocabularies  will  approximate  more  to  the  adult  speech 
than  do  the  various  vocabularies  of  children  all  over  the  world 
one  to  another.  A  point  of  interest  is  suggested  by  the  last 
two  columns  in  the  table  (based  upon  Skeat),  which  reveal 
certain  differences  between  the  '  native '  and  '  borrowed '  ele- 
ments of  our  English  vocabulary.  Studies  along  this  line 
might  be  productive  of  good  results. 

In  the  Dene  (Athapascan)  languages  of  North-western 
Canada  the  consonants  preponderate  to  such  an  extent  in  the 
essentials  of  word-formation  that  Father  Morice  does  not 
hesitate  to  say  that  '  in  so  far  as  the  root-words  are  concerned 
the  phonetical  graphical  signs  of  the  Dene  languages  might 
be  reduced,  as  in  the  ancient  Semitic  tongues,  to  the  mere 
consonants.'  The  following  examples  will  suffice  to  illustrate. 
The  radical  /-;/-,  d-n-,  '  man,'  appears,  in  the  various  dialects, 
as  tana,  tane,  tani,  denu,  dene,  dane,  dine,  dune,  etc. ;  the 
radical  ;/;/,  'earth,'  as  nna,  nne,  nni,  nnu,  nen,  nan,  etc.; 
the  radical  h'-,  'beaver,'  as  tsa,  tse,  tsi,  tso,  tsu.  In  these 
languages,  then,  'the  vowels  are  transmutable,  and  therefore, 
except  in  a  very  few  cases,  no  importance  whatever  should  be 
attached  to  them'  (438,  p.  150). 

'  C/icks '  zvM  Savages  and  Children. — There  are  many  points 
of  resemblance  between  the  languages  of  primitive  peoples  and 
those  of  children,  but,  all  over  the  world,  children  seem  to| 
possess  a  remarkable  ability  to  produce  even  the  most  difficult! 
of  sounds,  if  these  be  at  all  favoured  at  the  beginning.' 
Thus,  according  to  Kussmaul  and  Gutzmann  (261,  p.  38),  in 
the  early  period  of  instinctive  speech-production  very  young 
children  utter  not  only  all  (or  nearly  all)  of  the  sounds 
characterising  their  later  adult  speech,  but  can  also  produce 
'sounds  completely  corresponding  to  Arabic  and  Hebrew 
gutturals,'  which  adults  of  Aryan  stock  find  considerable  -^ 
difficulty  in  reproducing  at  all.  Moreover,  as  Gutzmann  tells 
us,  children  use  'clicks'  very  early — clicks  that  occur  in  no 
civilised  language,  but  are  found  in  several  savage  languages, 
such  sounds  being  actually,  '  from  a  mechanical  point  of  view, 
easier    for  the   child    to    produce    than    the    corresponding 

10 


132  THE  CHILD 

explosives.'  These  clicks  survive  to  some  extent,  according 
to  Gutzmann,  in  the  lip-click  of  the  '  kiss  par  distance^'  the 
tongue-clicks  in  interjections  of  sorrow,  admiration,  etc.,  and 
in  the  interjeclional  exclamations  used  in  urging  on  horses 
and  other  animals,  but  they  are  little  more  than  very  rudi- 
mentary speech-sounds,  and  not,  as  in  the  speech  of  the 
Hottentots,  e.g.,  complete  sound -elements.  Dr  Gutzmann 
cites  from  Biittner  the  statement  that  among  the  Khoi-Khoin 
the  children  have  a  fe>icha?it  for  these  clicks,  and  '  even  little 
children  a  few  months  old  are  without  doubt  able  to  repeat 
the  clicks  before  they  can  say />a/>a  or  fuama.'  And  not  only 
can  children  of  other  savage  tribes  learn  Hottentot  easily, 
in  contrast  with  adults,  but  there  seems  to  be  no  special 
constitution  of  the  child-mouth  among  the  Hottentots  for  the 
production  of  clicks.  We  learn,  moreover,  that,  while  the 
Hottentot  infant,  growing  up  in  a  foreign  environment,  does 
not  acquire  the  click,  the  children  of  the  European  missionaries, 
who  grow  up  among  the  Hottentots,  'speak  the  language  like 
the  natives,'  clicks  and  all.  Apparently  the  speech-capacities 
of  the  infant,  so  far  as  phonetics  are  concerned,  are  no  less 
wonderful  than  the  accomplishments,  later  on,  of  the  child  in 
the  field  of  the  dictionary  and  the  grammar.  Herder  said  : 
'  Man  is  so  endowed,  so  circumstanced,  and  such  is  his 
history,  that  speech  is  everywhere  and  without  exception  his 
possession.  And,  as  speech  is  the  property  of  all  men,  so  is  it 
the  privilege  of  humanity ;  only  man  possesses  speech.'  Citing 
this  passage  in  his  J^aces  of  Man  (523,  I.  p.  30),  Ratzel 
observes  :  '  We  may  add  that  mankind  possesses  it  in  no 
materially  different  measure.  Every  people  can  learn  the 
language  of  every  other.  We  see  daily  examples  of  the  com- 
plete mastery  of  foreign  languages,  and  therein  the  civilised 
races  have  no  absolute  superiority  over  the  savage.'  This  is 
true  in  all  parts  of  the  globe,  as  Ratzel  indicates :  '  Many  of 
the  persons  in  high  position  in  Uganda  speak  Swaheli,  some 
Arabic;  many  of  the  Nyamwesi  have  learnt  the  same  languages. 
In  the  trading  -  centres  of  the  West  African  coast  there  are 
negroes  enough  who  know  two  or  three  languages ;  and  in  the 
Indian  schools  in  Canada  nothing  astonishes  the  missionaries 
so  much  as  the  ease  with  which  the  youthful  Redskins  pick  up 
French  and  English.' 

Originality  and  Logic  of  Children  in  Language. — The  fact 
emphasised  by  StoU  that  '  children  create  and  use  for  a  time 


THE   LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD  1 33 

linguistic  forms  that  are  more  logical  than  those  employed  by 
their  parents  or  than  the  usual  forms  of  the  language  to  the 
use  of  which  they  are  destined  '  (617,  p.  4)  is  borne  out  by  the 
studies  of  Horatio  Hale  (267,  p.  113)  and  others  who  have 
investigated  the  phenomena  of  spontaneously-generated  child- 
speech.  The  logic  of  the  child  has  been  discussed  by  Munz 
(452),  who,  starting  from  the  standpoint  that  'with  the  child, 
as  with  primitive  man,  the  first  vocal  sounds  are  the  result  of 
a  mechanical  creation,  a  reflex  movement,'  points  out  that  'we 
teach  children  not  lajiguage-speakifig,  but  merely  our  language.^ 
It  is  the  artificial  product  of  centuries  of  human  determination 
and  co-ordination,  not  the  logical  development  to  the  full  of 
an  instinctive  primitive  speech,  that  we  give  over  to  the  child. 
It  is  for  this  reason  that  the  language  of  the  child  under  the 
immediate  influence  and  example  of  adults  (who  are,  logically, 
other-minded  than  he)  differs  markedly  from  the  carefully- 
built-up  and  entirely  consistent  tongues  of  many  savage  and 
barbarous  races,  while,  in  their  regularity  and  mode  of 
derivation  one  from  another,  the  verb-forms  and  inflections 
proper  to  the  spontaneous  language  of  the  child  often  distinctly 
recall  the  corresponding  features  of  the  speech  of  many  primi- 
tive peoples.  Such  a  sentence,  e.g.,  as  :  JDem  Papa  wurde  ihr 
Buck  auf  der  Mama  seinen  Platz  gelegt,  could  not  exist  in 
savage  languages.  One  of  the  greatest  triumphs  of  human 
language  has  been  to  get  rid  of  the  'logical'  machinery  of 
speech,  classification-words,  suffixes,  affixes,  prefixes,  infixes, 
gender-noters,  time-markers,  action-recorders,  place-indicators, 
et  hoc  genus  omne,  with  which  many  primitive  languages  fairly 
riot — to  substitute,  in  fact,  a  logic  of  the  mind  for  a  logic  of  the 
tongue,  an  art  of  thinking  for  one  of  word-making.  But  so 
free  has  the  language  of  to-day  become  from  such  develop- 
mental-processes that  the  child,  to  whom  many  of  them  are 
as  natural  as  they  were  to  the  first  of  our  race,  misses  in  the 
ready-made  speech  imposed  upon  him  the  stimuli  which  go  so 
far  to  produce  the  Jiaivete  and  the  genial  side  of  the  highest 
forms  of  language  which,  as  is  well-known,  themselves  approxi- 
mate often  to  other,  and  perhaps  higher,  ideals  born  of  the  child 
himself 

Child  Speech  and  Linguistic  Variety. — Mr  Hale  observes, 
concerning  the  following  sentences  of  a  three-four-year-old 
boy  (267,  p.  99),  '  Harry  just  now  see  two  pigeon-pigeon,  fly 
high,  high,'  'cat  scratch  Harry,  yes'day,'  that  'the  philologist 


134  THE   CHILD 

will  see  that,  except  in  the  absence  of  pronouns  (and  some- 
times even  in  this  respect)  it  represents  the  simplest  form  of 
agglutinative  speech,  such  as  we  find  in  the  Malay  and  Manchu 
groujis  of  languages.'  Of  the  speech  of  a  little  two-year-old 
boy  of  his  own  household,  the  same  competent  authority  tells 
us,  'They  were  all  monosyllables,  comijoscd  either  of  one 
vowel  or  diphthong  alone,  or  else  of  a  vowel  or  diphthong 
preceded  by  a  single  consonant.  Every  word  ended  with 
a  vowel  [as  is  the  case  in  not  a  few  primitive  languages], 
and  two  consonants  never  came  together.  All  his  words  were 
thus  reduced  to  a  form  of  the  utmost  simplicity;  and,  of 
course,  the  same  syllable  had  many  significations.'  Mr  Hale 
also  adds  this  comment  :  '  What  was  particularly  interesting 
was  the  fact  that  this  language  took  a  completely  Chinese  form. 
In  the  proper  Chinese,  as  is  well-known,  every  word  ends  in  a 
vowel,  either  pure  or  nasalised ;  and  the  great  majority  of 
words  comprise  but  a  single  consonantal  sound.'  Some  details 
of  the  langu.ige  of  a  little  nephew  of  the  distinguished  philo- 
logist, Professor  G.  von  der  Gabelentz,  are  likewise  given  by 
Mr  Hale  (267,  p.  113).  This  child  called  things  by  names 
of  his  own  invention,  and  '  in  these  names  the  constant 
elements  were  the  consonants,  while  the  vowels,  according 
as  they  were  deeper  or  higher,  denoted  the  greatness  or  the 
smallness.'     Some  of  these  words  were, — 

(a)  lakail=2cc\  ordinary  chair;  liikiill  =gxczi  arm-chair; 
//Xv7/=  little  doll's  chair. 

(b)  mem  =  watch,  plate  ;  mi/m  --■=  large  dish,  round  table ; 
mi'm  =  moon  ;  viim-miin-jniin-mijii  —  stars. 

(c)  papa  =  father  (every  grown-up  male  person  at  first) ; 
o-papa  (from  Grosspapa)  =  grandfather  (other  gentlemen) ; 
u-pupii  =  uncle  ;  pupii  =  father  with  a  big  hat  on,  big  papa. 

Here  we  certainly  have  (as  we  had  in  the  case  of  the  other 
child  a  monosyllabic  form  of  speech  in  the  making)  the 
beginnings  of  a  system  of  inflection  like  that  of  the  Semitic  and 
other  language-stocks  that  inflect  by  means  of  vowel-change, 
and  we  can  see  how,  in  childhood,  languages  morphologically 
as  distinct  as  Chinese  and  Hebrew  could  readily  have  arisen, 
even  within  the  same  household.  There  is,  therefore,  much 
force  in  Mr  Hale's  conclusion, — '  It  would  be  more  exact  to 
say  that  each  linguistic  stock  must  have  originated  in  a  single 
household.  There  was  an  Aryan  family-pair,  a  Semitic  family- 
pair,  an  Algonkian  family-pair.    And,  further,  it  is  clear  that  the 


THE   LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD  1 35 

members  of  each  family-pair  began  to  speak  together  in 
childhood.  No  instance  was  ever  known,  nor  can  one  be 
reasonably  imagined,  of  two  persons,  previously  speechless, 
beginning  to  speak  together  in  a  new  language  of  their  own 
invention  after  they  had  attained  maturity.  On  the  other 
hand,  many  instances  are  known  in  which  young  children  have 
devised  and  constantly  used  such  a  language.'  Interesting  in 
this  connection  are  Dr  Lieber's  account  of  the  vocal 
sounds  of  Laura  Bridgman,  and  the  remarks  of  Heinicke 
cited  by  Wedgewood  (678,  p.  xiv.),  from  Tylor  :  'AH 
mutes  discover  words  for  themselves  for  different  things. 
Among  over  fifty  whom  I  have  partially  instructed  or  been 
acquainted  with,  there  was  not  one  who  had  not  uttered  at 
least  a  few  spoken  names  which  he  had  discovered  for  himself, 
and  some  were  very  clear  and  distinct.  I  had  under  my 
instruction  a  born  deaf-mute,  nineteen  years  old,  who  had 
previously  invented  many  writeable  words  for  things.  For 
instance,  he  called  "  to  eat "  miini^n^  "  to  drink,"  schipp,  etc' 
Origin  of  Linguistic  Diversity. — The  irrepressibility  of  this 
language-instinct  in  early  childhood  is,  Mr  Hale  thinks,  the 
cause  of  origin  of  the  varieties  of  human  language  (107,  pp. 
261-267).  Not  alone  the  Aryo-Semitic  problem,  but  the 
existence  of  such  a  diversity  of  speech  in  such  comparatively 
limited  areas  as  the  Oregon  -  California  region  and  the 
Caucasus,  finds  explanation  through  this  theory.  To  use  the 
words  of  Mr  Male:  'It  was  as  impossible  for  the  first  child 
endowed  with  this  [instinctive  language]  faculty  not  to  speak 
in  the  presence  of  a  companion  similarly  endowed  as  it  would 
be  for  a  nightingale  or  a  thrush  not  to  carol  to  its  mate.  The 
same  faculty  creates  the  same  necessity  in  our  days,  and  its 
exercise  by  young  children,  when  accidentally  isolated  from 
the  teachings  and  influence  of  grown  companions,  will  readily 
account  for  the  existence  of  all  the  diversities  of  speech  on  our 
globe'  (267,  p.  47).  Hale  gives  brief  accounts  of  many 
'  original  languages '  of  children,  and  their  great  number  (for 
they  are  really  not  at  all  rare)  affords  a  point  of  contact  in 
parallelism  with  the  condition  of  the  earliest  known  tribes 
of  man,  for  as  Powell  says  (507,  p.  loi) :  'As  we  go  back 
in  the  study  of  languages  they  are  multiplied  every- 
where. Mr  Cushing  .  .  .  comes  from  the  study  of  one  Httle 
tribe,  the  Zuni,  and  finds  its  speech  made  up  from  two 
or  more   tongues  which  have  coalesced.      And   so  I  might 


136  THE  CHILD 

illustrate  from  the  many  languages  in  North  America,  and 
show  that  no  speech  has  been  found  that  is  not  made  up 
of  other  tongues ;  all  are  compound.'  According  to  Brinton, 
also  (74,  p.  62)  :  '  Within  the  historic  period,  the  number  of 
languages  has  been  steadily  diminishing.  We  know  of  scores 
that  have  become  extinct,  as  many  American  tongues ;  others, 
like  the  Celtic,  are  in  plain  process  of  disappearance.' 

Hale's  view  of  the  child's  activity  in  the  origination  of 
the  diversity  of  human  language  and  human  languages  has 
been  looked  upon  with  favour  by  Romanes  (547,  pp.  138-144), 
Higginson  (296),  Brinton  (74,  p.  61),  and  other  authorities. 

Secret  Languages  of  Children. — Following  up  the  articles 
of  Dr  F,  S.  Krauss  of  Vienna,  on  '  Secret  Languages,'  Dr 
Oscar  Chrisman,  a  former  pupil  of  the  present  writer,  has 
studied  in  great  detail  the  passion  for  '  secret  languages ' 
among  children,  which  may  be  brought  into  relation  with 
the  facts  adduced  by  Hale.  Dr  Chrisman  tells  us  that  'of 
nearly  five  hundred  specimens  of  secret  languages  used  in 
childhood,  I  know  only  one  instance  where  the  children 
obtained  such  from  a  book.  .  .  .  All  the  other  secret 
languages  had  been  either  handed  down  to  the  users  or  made 
up  by  them.  In  the  great  majority  of  the  spoken  languages 
they  were  given  by  somebody  to  the  ones  using  them,  while  in 
the  written  languages  a  greater  number  were  made  by  the 
users'  (no,  p.  55).  He  remarks  upon  the  universal  use  of 
secret  languages  and  the  commonness  of  cipher  alphabets,  and 
Sartori  has  called  attention  to  the  very  frequent  use  of  special 
and  secret  languages  by  various  individuals,  societies,  classes, 
sects,  castes,  trades  and  professions,  in  all  ages  and  among  all 
peoples. 

Dr  Chrisman  holds  that  (no,  p.  54) :  'This  secret-language 
period  is  a  thing  of  child  nature.  There  are  three  distinct 
periods  in  language-learning  by  the  child.  The  first  is  the 
acquiring  of  the  mother-tongue.  The  second  period  comes 
shortly  after  the  time  of  beginning  to  learn  the  mother-tongue, 
and  is  a  language  made  up  by  children,  who  perhaps  find 
themselves  unable  to  master  the  mother  tongue.  Very  few 
children  have  a  complete  language  of  this  kind,  but  all  children 
have  a  few  words  of  such.  Then  comes  the  secret-language 
period.  Although  in  a  few  cases  the  learning  of  secret 
languages  began  about  the  sixth  year,  and  in  some  instances 
the   period   ran   till   after   the   eighteenth   year,   yet   the  vast 


THE   LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD  t^^ 

majority  of  cases  are  covered  by  the  period  between  the  eighth 
and  the  fifteenth  year,  while  the  greatest  use  is  between  the 
tenth  and  the  thirteenth  year.'  To  this  classification  it  may 
be  objected  that  the  '  mother-tongue  '  is  not  the  ^rsi  language 
the  child  endeavours  to  perfect,  but  its  own  tongue,  which  the 
learning  of  the  mother-language  suppresses — at  least  this  is 
a  reasonable  view  to  take  of  the  facts  in  question.  This,  how- 
ever, need  not  detract  from  the  pedagogical  importance  which 
Dr  Chrisman  attaches  to  the  secret-language  period,  as  being 
'next  to  tlie  mother-tongue  period,  the  very  best  time  for 
learning  foreign  languages ' ;  these  language  studies  might, 
perhaps,  be  begun  in  the  lower  school  grades. 

Not  entirely  satisfactory,  however,  is  Dr  Chrisman's  attempt 
to  improve  upon  Mr  Hale's  theory  of  the  ro/e  of  child-language 
in  the  production  of  the  diversities  of  human  speech  :  '  Thus, 
following  Mr  Hale's  theory,  the  linguistic  stocks  might  arise 
from  the  second  language  period  of  children,  and  the  varieties 
in  the  individual  stocks  might  come  from  the  third  (secret) 
language  period  of  children.  If  we  should  hold  that  the  child 
passes  through  all  the  periods  of  the  race — an  epitome_  of 
the  race — this  secret-language  period  again  becomes  an  im- 
portant matter ;  for  it  may  show  that  at  a  corresponding  period 
in  the  race  man  had  an  instinct  for  secret-language-making. 
One  family  would  have  its  own  language,  and  another  family  its 
own  language ;  these  in  time  separating,  and  each  family  keep- 
ing up  its  language,  would  give  to  us  the  linguistic  stocks 
or  the  varieties  in  the  linguistic  stocks'  (no,  p.  58).  But 
the  utter  artificiality  in  ihe  making  of  the  words  of  not  a  few  of 
these  secret  languages,  and  their  great  lack  of  the  real  raw 
material  out  of  which  grew  primitive  grammar,  forbid  the  belief 
that  they  have  ever  played  such  a  ro/e  in  the  history  of  the 
race  as  may  have  done  the  '  original '  languages  of  children 
described  by  Mr  Hale,  many  of  which  are  not  mere  vocabu- 
laries of  words  ingeniously  contrived  and  cunningly  em- 
ployed, but  real,  live,  growing  languages,  with  all  the  apparatus 
of  grammar  and  the  means  of  infinite  variation  and  rnodifica- 
tion.  Too  many  of  the  secret  languages  suggest  an  imitated  or 
transmogrified  dictionary  to  l)e  taken  as  the  best  efforts  of  the 
language-instinct  of  childhood,  even  though  they  be  almost  the 
only  noteworthy  product  of  a  formative  period  of  child-life. 
In  the  period  of  its  first  origins,  language  was  much  more 
naive    and   socially   spontaneous,   and    the    first    damor   con- 


138  THE   CHILD 

comifans  did  not  at  all  resemble  the  scene  of  the  three  little 
girls,  each  choosing  in  order  a  syllable,  and  producing,  as  their 
joint  work  to  express  the  idea  '  the  feeling  you  have  in  the 
dark  when  you  are  sure  you  are  going  to  bump  into  some- 
thing,' the  word  ku-or-bie  (no,  p.  378).  We  may  be  sure 
that  the  Australian  word,  pirrakufia,  by  which  the  Dieyerie 
tribe  of  South  Australia  express  the  idea  '  groping  in  an 
enclosed  space  with  the  hands  for  anything,'  was  never  created 
in  any  such  deliberate  and  carpenter-like  fashion — and  the 
same  thing  may  be  said  of  the  great  mass  of  primitive  speech. 
Nevertheless,  the  words  which  Dr  Chrisman  cites  from  a 
dictionary  composed  by  two  girls  are  very  interesting  and 
suggestive  (no,  p.  57),  although  we  need  the  whole  two 
hundred  to  properly  orient  ourselves  regarding  them.  It 
is  very  doubtful  if  such  expressions  as  the  following, 
composed  by  'a  purely  mechanical  process,'  offer  real  points 
of  contact  with  the  language  of  primitive  man,  or  the  real 
'original'  language  of  childhood:  I)omaf//e  =  where  utterly 
lost  things  went,  where  the  light  (of  a  match  when  struck) 
came  from  and  went  to,  etc.;  dovey  =  \vhen  one  seems  to 
resemble  one's  name;  ^2^^  =  instinctive  feeling  that  some  one 
whom  you  do  not  see  is  in  the  room  with  you  ;  07v/y  =  feeling  one 
has  when  he  has  found  anything ;  /a/^y  =  feeling  of  the  world 
being  like  a  theatre.  Perhaps  the  nearest  approach  in  all 
to  the  list  of  primitive  words  with  life  in  them  and  devoid 
of  the  namby-pambyism  of  so  many  of  these  'feeling'  words, 
are  halala  = '  exultant  feeling,  wild  and  inspiring,  from  the 
influence  of  being  out  in  a  wild  wind-storm  by  the  sea,'  etc. ; 
and  sabba  =  '  individual  house-smell.' 

It  ought  to  be  mentioned  that  Mr  Hale's  theory  was 
largely  anticipated  by  Dr  von  Martius,  whose  study  of  Brazilian 
dialects  led  him  to  consider  the  influence  of  isolated  families 
of  hunters  and  fishers  upon  the  variation  of  language,  and  the 
effects  produced  by  the  adoption  by  parents  of  changes  initi- 
ated, especially  in  pronunciation,  by  children,  to  say  nothing 
of  the'  marked  differences  existing  in  the  language  of  indi- 
viduals, all  of  which  contributes  to  prevent  these  languages 
becoming  stationary,  and  induces  in  them  countless  variations 
of  accent,  pronunciation,  vocabulary,  and  even  grammar  and 
syntax.  Dr  Charles  Rau,  who  remarked  that  '  it  would  seem 
that,  among  savages,  children  are,  to  a  great  extent,  the 
originators  of  idiomatic  diversities,'  and  Oscar  Peschel,  who 


THE   LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD  1 39 

emphasised  the  results,  among  savage  people,  of  the  over- 
indulgence of  parents  in  '  baby-talk,'  by  which  sometimes  a 
new  dialect  has  been  started  (524,  p.  44),  followed  yon 
Martius.  Not  much  has  been  written  about  the  child- 
language  of  primitive  peoples  ;  we  know,  however,  that  much 
of  the  vocabulary  ascribed  to  the  children  of  savage  peoples  is 
as  far  from  being  original  with  them  as  it  is  with  us.  Con- 
cerning the  child-language  of  the  Iroquois  Indians,  of  which 
not  a  few  specimens  are  on  record  (and  the  same  remarks 
apply  to  the  child-language  of  the  Algonkian  Indians),  the 
Abbe  Cuoq,  linguist  and  lexicographer,  tells  us  (106,  p.  322) 
that  this  language  which  is  'current  in  every  family'  is  'taught 
to  the  children  by  relatives,  the  mother  in  particular,  and  the 
child's  role  is  merely  one  of  imitation  and  reproduction.' 
There  are,  however,  as  with  us,  doubtless  many  real  words 
invented  by  children  among  primitive  races,  but  we  are  not 
yet  in  possession  of  facts  concerning  them. 

Degeneratio7i  in  Inventmi. — As  to  the  inventive  stage  of 
child-language  generally,  Dr  Lukens  very  aptly  remarks  (377, 
p.  442):  'This  inventive  stage  may  degenerate  into  the 
silliest,  emptiest  nonsense,  holding  the  child  back  in  his  pro- 
gress, and  injuring  his  development  permanently  if  it  is  too 
far  encouraged  by  parents  and  others  through  adopting  and 
using  the  babyish  nonsense  themselves,  or  even  by  recognising 
it  and  letting  the  child  see  that  it  will  pass  as  language.  One 
unfortunate  infant,  brought  up  under  the  tutelage  of  such  a 
Georgy-porgy,  wheely-peely  baby-talk  mother,  called  a  dog  a 
"  zvaggy,"  a  cow  a  ''/lor/fj,"  a  horse  a  "  /la/ia,"  a  nut  a  "  cadrr" 
his  nurse  "  zvo7v-wozv,"  and  a  banana  a  "parso/i,"  and  kept  it 
up  till  he  was  four  years  of  age  (Marion  Harland).' 

An  interesting  example  of  the  influence  of  '  baby-talk  '  is 
given  by  Mrs  Hogan  (300,  p.  146),  where  the  piggie-wiggie- 
wiggie  of  some  verses  improvised  by  his  aunt  led  a  four-year- 
old  child  to  make  the  request,  '  Read  the  engine-book  funny, 
f^'ffy^  P^^ffy,  P'ff-  The  same  child  had  the  habit  of  talking 
himself  to  sleep  with,  yi-old,  /;-old,  r-old  .  .  .  2-old. 

Li?iguis(ic  Invention  at  Puberty. — The  language-creating 
faculty,  by  no  means  exhausted  in  childhood,  often  reappears 
with  remarkable  fulness  and  power  in  young  men  and  young 
women  (the  latter  especially)  in  those  halcyon  days  which 
precede  the  complete  attainment  of  manhood  and  woman- 
hood.    The  '  second  childhood  of  love,'  as  it  has  been  called, 


140  THE   CHILD 

seems  to  resurrect  the  old  instinrt  of  earlier  childhood,  and 
give  it  a  tem[)orary  range  of  splendour  and  luxuriance  that 
is  sometimes  really  wonderful.  A  young  woman  of  twenty, 
known  to  the  present  writer,  is  very  fond  just  at  present  of  a 
language,  apparently  thoroughly  informed  with  the  necessary 
machinery  of  human  speech,  and  yet  entirely  her  own  creation. 
In  its  vocabulary  the  following  words  appear  :  aglia  =  '  here  it 
is';  rt///a  =  ' don't  you  see?'  l>aya  =  'yc^' ;  l>aMa  =  ' yes, 
indeed  ! '  duva  or  buyunda  =  '  darling ' ;  lyd/a  =  '  I  don't  know ' ; 
?iiik  =  '  here! '  nyum  ^  '  hm— hm  ! '  puydl=  '  sunset ' ;  vut  = 
'  stop  ! '  ydpacan  =  '  always,  forever ' ;  y/ig^ '  cold  ' ;  bu  e  ld  = 
'where  are  you  going?'  Specimens  of  sentences  as  they  are 
rattled  off,  without  the  speaker  as  yet  apparently  knowing  the 
exact  signification  of  each  word  separately,  yet  having  some 
general,  hazy  idea  of  the  meaning  of  the  whole,  are :  Pitk-la 
buydt  nutiydtd  biydka  ikdlua  bukaletz.  Bia  esitdtuk.  Ffkaldti 
buvafitz  pikala.  Here,  as  in  the  early  language-creations  of 
childhood,  we  can  see  a  language  in  the  making,  and  the 
speaker  only  gr.idually  attains  to  complete  possession  and 
control  of  it,  while  the  hearer  feels  no  such  difficulty  in  its 
comprehension  as  meets  him  in  the  acquisition  of  a  foreign 
tongue  after  the  period  of  childhood  has  passed. 

Characteristics  of  Early  Child  Speech. — Deville,  in  some 
very  interesting  articles  in  the  Revue  de  Linguistique,  the 
sagacity  and  ingenious  patience  displayed  in  which  are  highly 
praised  by  Henri  (293,  p.  50),  notes  in  particular  some  of  the 
most  striking  characteristics  of  child  speech.  Remarkable  is 
the  comparatively  early  age  at  which  the  'faculte  de  rappel' 
occurs  in  children,  a  nineteen-months'-old  girl,  e.g.,  '  talked 
just  as  if  she  were  relating  something  to  her  mother.'  Curious, 
indeed,  are  some  of  the  associations  that  give  rise  to  word- 
making ;  a  girl  of  nineteen  months,  e.g.,  called  'soap'  mene, 
probably  from  omnener  proinener  (she  was  washed  before 
being  taken  out  to  walk),  and  a  girl  of  six  to  seven  years  re- 
marked, 'Nous  etions  arrives  a  I'e'cole  en  retot^  having  'not 
the  least  intent  to  create  a  new  word,  or  the  least  idea  she  had 
created  one,'  for  her  e7i  refof  was  as  natural  as  ejt  retard. 
The  skill  with  which  children  observe  and  reproduce  accent, 
intonation,  cadence,  etc.,  is  wonderful,  their  ears  seizing  an 
infinitude  of  inflections  lost  to  the  adult  ear,  which  is  trained 
alone  to  perceive  adult  sounds.  The  child  readily  distin- 
guishes pa  /'J='par  terre'  and  /a-//= 'pate,'  and  some  of  its 


THE   LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD  I41 

performances  in  the  way  of  accent  and  intonation  rival  the 
well-known  phenomena  of  Chinese  and  other  primitive  tongues. 
The  child's  keenness  for  its  own  sounds  is  admirably  revealed 
in  the  case  of  a  little  girl  (nineteen  months  of  age),  who,  in- 
different to  being  called  'Suzanne'  or  'Suzon,'  and  responding 
readily  to  either  of  these  names,  yet  reproduces  herself 
'  Suzanne '  by  ia-ia  and  '  Suzon '  by  ia-io,  but  refuses  to  answer 
when  called  by  adults  ia-ia  or  ia-io.  A  child  (389  days  old) 
who  had  been  addressed  in  a  somewhat  severe  tone  responded 
imitatively  atata,  reproducing  the  adult's  attend,  attend,  which 
she  had  just  heard ;  another  child  (629  days  old)  reproduced 
entends-tu  by  atatu — in  both  cases  the  accent  was  faithfully 
preserved.  To  the  child  a  single  word,  often  a  monosyllable 
like  /a,  may  have  a  vast  variety  of  significations,  helped  out 
by  accent  and  intonation,  outnumbering  the  meanings,  e.g.,  of 
tu,  in  the  primitive  tongue  of  the  Fantis  of  West  Africa.^ 

'  Sentence  JFords.' — In  the  course  of  his<  chapter  on 
'Sentence  Building,'  Sully  takes  occasion  to  remark  (625a, 
p.  171):  '  It  is  not  generally  recognised  that  the  single- 
worded  utterance  of  the  child  is  an  abbreviated  sentence  or 
"  sentence-word  "  analogous  to  the  sentence-words  found  in  the 
simplest  known  stage  of  adult  language.  As  with  the  race  so 
with  the  child — the  sentence  precedes  the  word.  Moreover, 
each  of  the  child's  so-called  words  in  his  single-worded  talk 
stands  for  a  considerable  variety  of  sentence  forms.  Thus, 
the  words  in  the  child's  vocabulary,  which  we  call  substantives, 
do  duty  for  verbs  and  so  forth.'  Lukens  (377,  pp.  453-8) 
emphasises  the  fact  that  when  children  in  the  latter  part  of 
the  first  year  and  the  first  part  of  the  second  year  use  single 
words  to  express  their  thoughts,  'the  same  word  may  mean 
very  different  things,  according  to  its  use.  Inflection,  tone 
and  gesture  are  everything  to  the  child  (Preyer  counted  eleven 
such  meanings  of  the  German  atta,  "all  gone,"  as  used  by  his 
boy  in  the  first  two  years,  and  nowhere  near  exhausted  the 
list).'  As  Lukens  rightly  says  :  'Such  words  are  undifferenti- 
ated sentence-words,  and  are  similar  to  such  use  of  exclama- 
tions as  '■'■Fire I"  or  "  T/iic/!''  There  is  no  grammar  to  such 
expressions,  since  grammar  has  to  do  with  the  relation  of 
different  words  to  each  other,  and  here  there  is  only  one 
word.  Language  would  mislead  us  badly  if  we  were  hence 
to  conclude  that  the  little  child  in  using  such  expressions  does 

"^  Jo  urn.  Anthr,  Inst.,  1896. 


142  THE  CHILD 

not  really  have  a  true  judgment  in  consciousness.  To  classify 
such  child-words  by  the  adult  distinctions  of  parts  of  speech 
and  say  that  these  children  above  quoted  used  the  adverb 
«'?/^"  [  =  desire  to  be  lifted  up  in  arms],  the  pronoun  "  w^  " 
[  =  Give  me  that],  the  noun  ^^ horse"  [  =  1  want  to  ride],  etc., 
but  had  not  yet  begun  to  use  verbs,  is,  of  course,  simply  to  be 
misled  by  very  superficial  considerations.'  For  this  reason 
children  easily  turn  words  into  any  part  of  speech,  as  Shake- 
speare could,  and  (Dr  Lukens  remarks)  as  most  grown  people 
do  occasionally,  when  '  freed  from  the  thraldom  of  the 
grammarians.' 

Here,  surely,  Herbert  Spencer's  dictum  applies  that 
'language  was  made  before  grammar,'  though  certain  dialects, 
jargons  and  slang  forms  of  speech  show  that  it  can  also  be 
made  after  grammar.  The  child's  ha?id-organi}ig,  Fm  are  (in 
reply  to  the  inquiry  '  Are  you  going  ? '),  mebbe  (for  '  it  may  be 
that'),  openit  door  (with  enclitic  pronoun),  ^i?/-^^?  (  =  'get  your 
things  and  let's  go  for  a  walk '),  and  other  expressions  cited  by 
Dr  Lukens,  find  their  analogies  in  the  language  of  primitive 
man,  of  ignorant,  civilised  and  criminal  cultured  man.  Some 
interesting  items  as  to  the  *  primitive  sentence-words '  (which 
the  author,  contrary  to  Steinthal,  holds  were  more  like  verbs 
than  nouns)  of  American  aboriginal  languages  may  be  read  in 
the  linguistic  essays  of  Dr  D.  G.  Brinton,  v/ho  remarks  (73, 
p.  403) :  '  Primitive  man,  said  Herder,  was  like  a  baby ;  he 
wanted  to  say  all  at  once.  He  condensed  his  whole  sentence 
into  a  single  word.  Archdeacon  Hunter,  in  his  Lecture  on 
the  Cree  Language,  gives  us  as  an  example  the  scriptural  phrase, 
"  1  shall  have  you  for  my  disciples,"  which  in  that  tongue  is 
expressed  by  one  word.'  And  this  incorporation  (holophrasis, 
polysynthesis,  etc.)  is  a  very  marked  characteristic  of  perhaps 
most  American  aboriginal  tongues.  But  there  is  a  very  wide 
difference  between  the  '  sentence-word '  of  the  savage  and  the 
'  sentence-word '  of  the  child,  between  the  Aztec  onictemacac  =  I 
have  given  something  to  somebody  {p  =  augment  of  the  preterite, 
a  tense  sign;  ?//=  pronoun,  subject,  first  person;  ^=  semi-pro- 
noun, object,  second  person;  /"t?  =  inanimate  semi-pronoun, 
object,  third  person;  maca  =  \\\Qn\&  of  the  verb  'to  give'; 
f=  suffix  of  the  preterite,  a  tense  sign),  which  Brinton  cites 
as  'a  characteristic  specimen  of  incorporation,'  and  the  child's 
^give.'  The  last  is  a  primitive  monolith,  the  first  a  modern 
tenement  house. 


THE    LANGUAGE   OF    CHILDHOOD 


143 


Parts  of  Speech. — But  there  is,  nevertheless,  a  real  resem 
blance  between  the  two  '  sentence-words,'  as  may  be  seen  from 
tlie  following  words,  quoted  by  Dr  Brinton  from  Winkler's 
discussion  of  the  Pokomchi,  one  of  the  Mayan  languages  of 
Central  America :  '  The  same  word-complex  functions  here 
as  a  pure  verb,  or  as  a  whole  sentence,  there  as  an  equally  pure 
noun ;  and  again,  under  some  circumstances,  what  was  a  verb, 
or  a  verbal  expression,  may  take  on  a  constructive  increment, 
which  will  transfer  it  wholly  into  the  adjective  sphere.'  ^  _ 

The  distribution  of  the  various  parts  of  speech  in  the 
vocabularies  of  children  has  been  discussed  by  several  writers. 
Dr  Tracy  gives  the  percentage  calculated  from  5400  words 
as  follows :  Nouns  90,  verbs  20,  adjectives  9,  adverbs  5, 
pronouns  2,  prepositions  2,  interjections  1.7,  conjunctions  0.3. 
The  proportion  in  the  '  boy's  dictionary,'  cited  by  Miss  Wolff, 
was:  Nouns  42  per  cent.,  verbs  30  per  cent.,  adverbs  10  per 
cent.,  adjectives  8  per  cent.,  prepositions  4  per  cent.,  all 
others  6  per  cent.  (648). 

Mr  Salisbury  found  the  distribution  of  the  parts  of  speech 
in  his  child's  vocabulary,  at  different  ages,  to  be  as  follows 
(561):- 


Age. 

Nouns. 

Pron. 

Verbs. 

Adj. 

Adv. 

Prep. 

Conj. 

Int'rj. 

Total. 

32  mons. 
5i  y'rs. 

883 

24 
22 

150 
321 

60 
236 

32 

40 

20 
20 

4 
5 

5 

I 

642 

1528 

Dr  H.  T.  Lukens  justly  calls  attention  to  the  doubtful 
value  of  all  classification  of  children's  words  according  to  adult 
ideas,  as  embodied  in  the  division  into  '  parts  of  speech,'  for 
children,  even  more  than  geniuses  or  jargon-users,  and  some 
savage  peoples,  often  fail  to  make  any  such  distinctions  what- 
ever, using  a  noun  for  a  verb,  a  verb  for  a  noun,  an 
adjective  for  an  adverb,  or,  vice  versa,  an  adverb  or  preposi- 
tion for  a  verb.  He  gives  the  following  interesting  examples  : 
'  It  ups  its  false  feet'  (said  of  an  amoeba  under  the  microscope); 
*a  chop\  =  2in  axe);  'the  hurt  blooded;  can  I  be  sorried'  {i.e., 
forgiven)  ;  to  die  ( =  to  make  dead,  to  kill) ;  he  was  hatid-organ- 
ing,  etc.  (377,  p.  454)-  Still  the  parts-of-speech-classification 
does  serve  as  a  rude  test  and  is  not  entirely  worthless,  even 
^Aftier.  Antiq.,  Jan.  1S94. 


144  THE   CHILD 

though  the  child  is  really  sentence-wording  a  good   deal  of 
the  time. 

l)r  Tracy  (juotcs  Professor  Kirkpatrick  as  giving  ihe  corre- 
sponding percentages  in  the  Englisli  (adult)  language  as: 
Nouns  60,  verbs    11,  adjectives   22,  adverbs   5.5,    all   others 

Comparison  with  savage  languages  is  very  difficult  here  on 
account  of  the  lack  of  thorough  knowledge  of  the  etymological 
constitution  of  so  many  words  of  the  vocabulary  and  the  great 
variation  in  their  form  and  use,  but  some  commonly-repeated 
errors  can  now  be  corrected. 

It  has  been  common  to  deny  to  American  aboriginal 
languages  the  j^ossession  of  true  nouns.  Brinton  states  the 
case  rightly  when  he  says  '  there  is  often  no  distinction  between 
a  noun  and  a  verb  other  than  the  pronoun  which  governs  it.' 
But  often  there  are  other  distinctions  (73,  p.  320). 

Dr  J.  H.  Trumbull,  deeply  read  in  the  philology  of  the 
Algonkian  tongues,  went  too  far  when  he  declared  every 
Indian  name  to  be  a  verb,  and  that  '  every  Indian  noun  is 
not  separable  as  a  part  of  speech  from  the  verb.  Every  name 
is  not  merely  descriptive  but  predicative.'  This  statement  is 
very  justly  criticised  by  Rev.  A.  G.  Morice,  who  says  :  'There 
are  in  Dene  many  nouns  which  have  no  relation  whatever  to 
the  verb  ;  nay,  the  great  majority  of  them  is  altogether  inde- 
pendent and  therefore  they  are  just  as  purely  nominative  as 
the  English  "  house,"  "  lake,"  "  bear,"  etc.'  Of  the  primary 
monosyllabic  roots,  comprising  '  about  two-fifths  of  the  whole 
aggregate  of  nouns  '  in  the  Dene  language.  Father  Morice  tells 
us;  'They  are  essentially  nominative  ;  they  neither  define  nor 
describe  the  objects  they  designate ;  they  merely  differentiate 
them  from  one  another '(437,  p.  176;  p.  181). 

Fro/ioims.—Vroies^or  Sully  (62Sa,  p.  178)  rightly  calls  for 
carefully-noted  data  concerning  the  growth  of  the  use  of  the 
pronouns  in  the  speech  of  children  ;  the  lack  of  distinction 
of  persons  at  a  certain  early  period,  however,  and  the  long- 
continued  state  of  confusion  in  the  child's  mind,  have  been 
generally  recognised.  Interesting  in  this  connection  are  the 
following  remarks  of  Dr  D.  G.  Brinton  (73,  p.  396):  'You 
might  suppose  that  this  distinction,  I  mean  that  between  se/j 
and  other,  between  /,  t/iou  and  he,  is  fundamental,  that  speech 
could  not  proceed  without  it.  You  would  be  mistaken. 
American    languages    furnish    conclusive    evidence  that,   for 


THE   LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD  I45 

unnumbered  generations,  mankind  got  along  well  enough 
without  any  such  discrimination.  One  and  the  same  mono- 
syllable served  for  all  three  persons  and  both  numbers.  The 
meaning  of  this  monosyllable  was  undoubtedly  "  any  living 
being." '  Here  we  get  pretty  close  to  the  young  child.  The 
extraordinary  development  of  the  i)ronouns  in  many  American 
languages — some  have  as  many  as  eighteen  different  forms,  as 
the  person  is  contemplated  as  standing,  lying,  in  motion,  at 
rest,  alone,  in  company,  etc. — Dr  Brinton  regards  as  a  recent 
outgrowth  and  development. 

In  his  discussion  of  the  Chinantec  language  of  Mexico,  Dr 
D.  G.  Brinton  1  cites  some  very  interesting  examples  of  the 
confusion  of  the  personal  pronouns  in  this  primitive  tongue : 
'  It  is  noteworthy  that  the  pronoun  of  the  third  person,  quia, 
may  be  used  for  either  the  second  or  the  first  in  its  possessive 
sense;  thus  vi  c/iaaqiiiqi/ia,  "for  his  sins,"  instead  of  vi  chaaqui 
na,  as  a  translation  of  "for  my  sins."  So  again  a/imas  quia  as 
a  translation  of  "our  souls."  '  As  Dr  Brinton  notes,  'this  is 
analogous  to  the  language  of  children,  who  do  not  clearly 
distinguish  persons,  and  often  refer  to  themselves  in  forms  of 
the  third  person  instead  of  the  first.' 

Order  of  Words. — The  order  of  words  in  the  language  of 
children  and  in  the  tongues  of  primitive  peoples  seems  often 
to  be  almost  entirely  controlled  by  the  necessity  of  speaking, 
and  not  by  any  logic  of  thought.  Sully  notes  the  frequency 
with  which  children  place  the  subject  after  the  predicate, 
the  subject  after  the  object,  etc.  (625a,  p.  173).  Dr  Lukens, 
discussing  the  linguistic  efforts  of  a  twenty-six-months-old 
boy,  whose  chcf-d'a:uvre  he  cites,  observes  (377,  p.  459)  :  'This 
example  illustrates  very  strikingly  the  fact  that,  to  the  child 
at  this  stage,  the  order  of  the  words  is  nothing.  He  wants  to 
say  it  a/l  at  once  anyhow,  just  as  he  thinks  it  all  at  once.' 
Brinton  tells  us  (73,  p.  405),  concerning  a  very  primitive 
South  American  Indian  language :  '  In  some  tongues,  the 
Omagua  of  the  Upper  Orinoco,  for  example,  there  is  no  sort 
of  connection  between  the  verbal  stem  and  its  signs  of  tense, 
mode  or  person.  They  have  not  even  any  fixed  order.'  In 
not  a  few  tongues  of  savage  and  barbarous  peoples  the 
adjective  may  precede  or  follow  the  word  it  qualifies,  and 
adverbs  often  are  equally  unfixed. 

Compound  Words. — Compound  words,  in  the   speech   of 
'  Proc.  Amer.  Philos.  Soc,  Vol.  XXX.,  1S92. 


146  THE  CHILD 

children  and  the  tongues  of  primitive  peoples,  offer  a  sug- 
gestive field  for  comparison.  Says  Trofessor  Sully  (625a, 
p.  1C7)  ;  'This  process  of  differentiation  and  specialisation 
assumes  an  interesting  form  in  a  characteristic  feature  of  the 
language-invention  of  both  children  and  savages,  viz.,  the 
formation  of  compound  words.  'I'hese  compounds  are  often 
true  metaphors.'  The  order  of  the  components  is  as  varied 
in  the  speech  of  the  savage  as  it  is  in  that  of  the  child,  and 
the  dictionary  of  the  compound  words  used  by  any  of  our 
modern  literary  artists  would  contain  not  a  few  of  the  choicest 
productions  of  the  child-mind  in  its  young  poetic  fury. 

Mcani/ii^s.  —  Professor  J.  P.  Postgate  reports  his  little 
daughter  as  saymg  one  day :  '  I  know  three  new  words — 
"scandalous,"*'  Matthew's  man,"  and  "  pretty  creature,'"  and  in 
the  early  stages  of  the  individual,  as  of  the  race,  the  idea 
makes  the  word.  Rhemes,  as  the  author  terms  such  '  words,' 
are  the  common  property  of  children  and  savages ;  with  both 
the  word  is  a  picture  of  the  thing.  These  idea-words  are  the 
child's  first  epics  and  dramas,  existing  in  gesture  forms  even 
before  the  advent  of  articulate  language.  Children  and  savages 
are  the  word-painters /ar  excellence,  and  the  field  of  their  skill 
lies  comparatively  unexplored.  For  psychology,  'the  science 
of  meaning,'  as  Postgate  calls  it — onomatology,  sematology — 
is  almost  virgin  soil.  Still  a  few  data  have  been  obtained, 
some  the  unsolicited  offerings  of  the  child's  mental  activities, 
others  brought  to  light  by  the  questionnaire  method  now  so 
much  in  vogue  (501,  p.  408). 

The  'Boy's  Dictionary'  of  215  words,  published  by  Miss 
Fanny  E.  Wolff,  of  New  York,  contains  abundant  evidence  of 
rheme-thinking,  as  may  be  seen  from  the  following  (689)  : — 

Kiss  is  if  you  hug  and  kiss  somebody. 

Mast  is  what  holds  the  sail  up  top  of  a  ship. 

Milk  is  something  like  cream. 

Nail  is  something  to  put  things  together. 

Nut  is  something  with  a  shell  good  to  eat. 

Old  is  not  new. 

Open  is  if  the  door  is  not  closed. 

Opera  is  a  house  where  you  see  men  and  ladies  act. 

Pickle  is  something  green  to  eat. 

Quarrel  is  if  you  began  a  little  fight. 

Ring  is  what  you  wear  on  your  finger. 

Saw  is  if  you  see  something,  after  you  see  it  you  siw  it. 


THE    LANGUAGE   OF    CHILDHOOD  I47 

Tall  is  if  a  tree  is  very  big. 

Ugly  is  if  a  thing  is  not  nice  at  all. 

Vain  is  if  you  always  look  in  the  glass. 

The  dictionary  in  question  was,  we  are  told,  completed 
before  his  seventh  year  by  a  boy  who  had  spent  two  years  at 
a  kindergarten,  and  was  stimulated,  doubtless,  by  the  picture- 
blocks,  of  which  he  was  very  fond,  since,  in  the  manuscript, 
the  words  are  often  provided  with  rude  illustrations.  He  was 
not  an  artist  nor  very  imaginative,  but  took  great  delight  in 
analysis  and  abstraction,  qualities  which,  at  the  age  of  eleven, 
continue  to  characterise  him,  and  even  was  fond  of  spelling. 
With  this  boy  lexicographer  may  be  contrasted  as  well  as 
compared  the  Cherokee  half-breed  genius,  George  Guess,  out 
of  whose  'dreamy  meditations,'  and  contemplation  of  the 
English  alphabet — he  could  neither  write  nor  speak  English  at 
the  time — was  born  the  famous  syllabary  by  which  the 
Cherokee  and  related  dialects  came  to  be  written  languages 
for  native  speakers.  Imitation  and  originality  mark  both  the 
word-expounder  and  the  sound-recorder.  On  the  Cherokee, 
perhaps,  the  spelling-book  he  gazed  at  so  often  exercised  a 
much  more  potent  influence  than  the  dictionary  that  lay 
unused  in  the  house  of  the  boy. 

In  an  exquisite  little  sketch  of  child-life  by  William 
Canton  these  definitions  by  a  six-year-old  girl  occur  (104, 
p.  487).:- 

Brain  =  \\  hat  you  think  with  in  your  head,  and  the  more 
you  think  the  more  crinkles  there  are. 

Dead  =  When  you  have  left  off  breathing,  and  your  heart 
stops  also. 

Flame  =  The  power  of  the  candle. 

From  France  we  have  data  of  like  import.  Using  always 
the  same  question  {Qu'est-ce  que  c'est?),  Binet  (56)  asked  his 
two  little  girls  (two-and-a-half  and  four-and-a-half  years  old) 
some  fifteen  times  in  the  course  of  a  year  (an  interval  of  five 
months  being  once  left  between  two  experiments)  what  they 
meant  by  certain  words  in  common  use,  and  wrote  down  the 
answers  exactly  as  they  were  given.  A  few  characteristic 
definitions  are  :  A  knife  is  to  cut  meat;  a  clock  is  to  see  the 
time  ;  bread  is  to  eat ;  a  dog  is  to  have  by  one  ;  an  arm-chair 
is  to  sit  in  ;  a  garden  is  to  walk  in  ;  a  potato  is  to  eat  with 
meat ;  a  bird  means  swallows  ;  village  means  one  sees  every- 
body pass.     M.  Binet  notes  the  lack  of  form-descriptions  in 


148  THE   CHILD 

the  children's  answers,  and  the  complete  prevalence  of  utilitarian 
ideas — the  use  of  the  object  fixing  itself  very  early  in  the  child's 
mind.  That  use  and  action  are  the  guiding  spirits  of  its 
lexicon  appears  also  from  the  fact  that  of  the  215  words  in  the 
'Boy's  Dictionary'  cited  above,  75  per  cent,  'clearly  express 
definite  action.' 

In  Monterey  County,  California,  with  the  assistance  of  the 
teachers  and  the  approval  of  the  school  authorities,  Professor 
Earl  Barnes  was  enabled  to  carry  on  in  1892  somewhat 
extensive  investigations  on  the  lines  suggested  by  Binet.  The 
results,  based  on  50  examination-papers  from  boys  and  50 
from  girls  of  each  age  between  six  and  fifteen  years  (in  all 
2000  children  sent  in  returns),  which  contained,  as  collated, 
37,136  statements  (girls  18,979,  boys  18,136)  about  the  33 
nouns,  definitions  of  which  had  been  requested.  Here,  again, 
it  seems,  the  uses  and  activities  of  objects  appeal  to  children 
before  structure,  form,  colour,  etc.  Of  definitions  directly 
mentioning  use  the  proportion  (boys  and  girls  together)  for 
each  of  the  years  is  as  follows:  79.49  per  cent.,  62.95  P^^ 
cent.,  67.02  per  cent,  63.83  per  cent.,  57.07  per  cent, 
43.81  per  cent,  43.69  per  cent,  33.74  per  cent, 
37.75  per  cent,  30.62  per  cent — or,  for  all  ages,  45.58  per 
cent  The  proportion  of  statements  of  the  type,  '  a  watch  is 
a  time-piece,'  is,  for  all  the  years  together  (boys  and  girls), 
15,09  per  cent.  Professor  Barnes  has  examined  the  definitions 
(of  the  33  nouns  used  in  the  investigation)  given  in  '  Webster's 
Dictionary,'  and  finds  that  '  at  fifteen  there  is  about  the  same 
proportion  between  definitions  of  use  [e.g.,  "a  clock  is  to  tell 
the  time  "]  and  larger  term  [e.g.,  "a  clock  is  a  time-piece"]  that 
we  find  in  "Webster,"  but  the  qualities  are  still  much  less 
developed.'  The  difference  between  the  child  and  the  adult 
as  lexicographers  comes  out  in  the  prominence  given  by 
the  latter  to  form  substance  and  structure  in  his  definitions 

(33)- 

One  cannot  help  thinking,  however,  that  the  dictionary- 
definitions  often  lie  closer  to  the  child's  than  those  of  indi- 
vidual adults,  or  of  adults  in  general,  recorded  orally  or  in 
writing,  since  the  lexicon  in  this  respect,  as  well  as  in  pro- 
nunciation, lags  behind  the  common  speech.  Dictionary- 
definitions,  too  (since  Dr  Johnson's  time,  at  least),  are  not  the 
free,  spontaneous  product  of  adult  thought,  and  hence  other 
differences  arise, 


THE   LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD  I49 

Very  fruitful  for  psychological  comparisons  would  be  an 
examination  of  the  earliest  dictionaries  of  all  languages,  for 
child-like,  indeed,  were  definitions  when  vocabulary-making  was 
in  its  infancy.  The  English  dictionaries  of  the  Elizabethan  age, 
and  the  Italian  dictionaries  of  a  little  later  epoch,  contain  much 
that  is  analogous  with  the  material  accumulated  by  the  re- 
searches of  Binet  and  Barnes.  John  Baret's  Alvearie  (15S0), 
John  Florio's  Worlde  of  Wordes  (1598),  Minsheu's  Z>/V//^;/ar)' 
in  Spanish  and  English  (1599),  Huloet's  English  Dictionary 
(1552),  and  Withals'  Little  Dictionary  for  Children  (1599)— the 
last  especially, — are  exceedingly  interesting  from  a  psycholo- 
gical standpoint  in  connection  with  the  development  of  word- 
defining. 

Name-Giving. — To  exemplify  the  resemblances  (and  differ- 
ences) between  the  meanings  of  words  in  child-speech,  the 
language  of  our  own  Aryan  ancestors,  and  of  certain  primitive 
peoples,  the  following  table  has  been  compiled  by  the  present 
writer.  It  contains  the  meanings  of  some  thirty  words  as 
given  by  two  French  children  (from  Binet),  two  American 
children  (from  Mrs  Hogan),  and  the  radical  meanings  of  the 
corresponding  words  in  French,  English,  German,  and  the 
Klamath,  Algonkian,  and  Kootenay  languages  of  the  American 
Indians.  It  will  be  seen  at  a  glance  that  there  are  individual 
differences  in  the  significations  given  by  children  and  those 
belonging  to  primitive  tongues,  dependent,  in  all  cases,  upon 
the  diverse  reactions  to  the  stimulus  of  the  object  named. 
Physical,  psychical,  sociological,  self  and  altruistic  motives  are 
all  represented,  and  it  might,  perhaps,  be  said  that  these  facts 
illustrate  as  much  the  general  unity  of  the  human  mind  among 
all  races  and  all  peoples,  with  its  individual  variations  and 
diversities,  as  any  marked  resemblances  or  differences  between 
the  child-mind  and  the  mind  of  primitive  peoples,  as  evidenced 
by  the  'science  of  meanings.'  More  than  all  else  they  seem 
to  illustrate  the  great  influence  of  the  immediate  and  habitual 
environment,  of  which  the  savage  naturally  possesses  a  greater 
knowledge  and  has  a  keener  appreciation  than  a  child.  The 
same  remark  would,  perhaps,  apply  here,  as  in  the  case  of 
drawing,  that  the  observation-gift  of  the  savage  makes,  as  a 
rule,  his  dictionary  a  more  picturesque,  less  monotonous,  and 
more  correct  series  of  word-pictures  than  the  child,  in  his  early 
years,  is  ever  capable  of  feeling  and  thinking  out,  much  less  of 
recording  in  words. 


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tS2  THE  CHILD 

Some  of  the  actions  of  primitive  peoples  in  novel  situations, 
and  their  api)reciations  of  new  facts,  bring  them  often  into  com- 
])arison  with  children.  Of  the  Cree  Indians  of  the  Athabasca 
Territory  in  North-western  Canada,  we  read  :  ^  'Of  all  the 
animals  the  pigs  astonish  the  Indians  most.  They  call  them 
kokosh  miiskwa  (things  like  bears),  and  they  are  afraid  of  them 
more  than  if  they  really  were  bears.  It  is  very  amusing  to  see 
them  running  for  all  they  are  worth,  and  climbing  up  a  rail 
fence  just  to  get  out  of  the  way  of  one  of  these  very  harm- 
less creatures.  Nothing,  however,  amuses  or  interests  the 
Indians  more  than  the  tame  ducks ;  they  cannot  understand 
how  it  is  the  ducks  should  go  down  to  the  river,  take  a 
swim,  and  then  go  home  and  take  food  out  of  Mr  Brick's  hand.' 

Bishop  Bompas  ^  observes,  concerning  the  Indians  who 
speak  the  Tukudh  language  (p.  98) :  '  All  articles  in  use 
by  the  whites  are  named  by  the  Indians  without  hesitation, 
according  to  their  employment.  A  table  is  what  you  eat  on ; 
a  chair,  what  you  sit  on ;  a  pen,  what  you  write  with.  A  watch 
is  called  the  sun's  heart.  A  minister  is  with  them  the  speaker, 
and  a  church  the  speaking-house.  So  a  lion  is  called  the  hairy 
beast,  and  the  camel  the  one  with  the  big  back.  A  bat  is 
called  the  leather-wing  because  such  is  its  appearance.  Thus 
an  Indian  is  never  at  a  loss  for  a  name.  A  steamboat,  before 
it  was  seen  by  the  Indians,  used  to  be  called  the  boat  that  flies 
by  fire ;  but  since  they  have  seen  it,  the  fire-boat  seems  to  be 
name  enough.'  These  Indians  are  'quick  at  learning  by  the 
eye,  but  slow  if  taught  by  the  ear ' ;  even  in  matters  of  Christi- 
anity they  would  be  '  better  schooled  by  example  than  by 
precept.'  The  Tukudh  would  seem  to  be  eye-minded.  There 
is  need  for  a  careful  study  in  psychological  etymology  in  order 
to  determine  in  how  far  savages  are  eye-minded,  ear-minded, 
motor-minded. 

Name  and  Thing. — Dr  Friedrich  Polle,  in  his  interesting 
little  book,  Folk-TJwught  about  Language,  gives  the  following 
examples  illustrative  of  children's  ideas  of  the  name  and  thing, 
and  the  relationship  of  these  : — 

I.  A  little  German  girl :  '  When  I  am  big  and  am  called 
mother  I  shall  cook  giblets  every  day.' 

1  Canad.  Ind.,  Vol.  I.,  1891,  p.  342. 

2  Colonial   Churcfi   History  of  tlie   Diocese  of  tlie   liJac/cenzie    River 
London,  18S8. 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  CHILDHOOD       1 53 

2.  Six-year-old  boy  of  Saxony:    'Who    is  going   to   be 

Prince  George  now  ? ' — Said  when  he  heard  that,  owing 
to  the  death  of  King  John,  the  Prince  Royal,  Albert, 
would  be  king,  and  Prince  George  become  Prince 
Royal. 

3.  An  eight-year-old  German  girl:    *  Do  the  people    on 

Venus  know  that  they  live  on  Venus  ? ' 

4.  A  little  German  boy  :  '  Mama,  do  the  animals  know 

their  names  ? ' — '  I'm  glad  of  that — how  ashamed  the 
ox,  the  ass  and  the  monkey  would  be  ! ' 

In  the  collections  of  children's  sayings  and  questionings 
much  more  of  the  same  import  is  recorded.  To  a  child 
there  is  something  in  a  name,  and  the  *it  is'  and  'it  isn't' 
of  children's  plays  and  games  represent  a  philosophy  of 
the  y^hyo^,  akin  in  some  respects  to  the  religious  word-cult 
of  adolescence,  and  the  battling  for  the  word  which  has 
characterised  most  religions  in  the  early  stages  of  civilisa- 
tion. Many  of  the  versions  of  the  famous  'it's  a  mouse,' 
'it's  a  rat'  contest  of  the  married  couple  belong  here 
also.  The  uncultured  peasant  and  the  uncontaminated 
savage  seem  sometimes  to  be  in  the  same  stage.  The 
peasant's  naive  question  of  the  astronomers :  '  How  did 
you  find  out  the  names  of  the  stars?'  is  all  too  common. 
Polle  cites  the  following  apt  illustration :  '  An  Austrian,  a 
Hungarian  and  an  Italian  were  disputing  about  the  beauty, 
etc.,  of  their  respective  mother-tongues.  The  Austrian  finally 
admitted  that,  while  it  might  be  uncertain  which  language  was 
the  most  beautiful,  there  could  be  no  doubt  but  German  was 
the  most  correct.  I'll  prove  it.  You,  Hungarian,  what  do  you 
call  the  contents  of  this  glass  ?  Viz.  And  you,  Italian  ?  Acqua. 
Good,  I  like  that.  We  call  the  contents  of  this  glass  Wasser 
(water),  and  not  merely  do  we  call  it  so,  but  it  is  Wasser  I  ^ 
The  belief  in  a  connection  between  name  and  thing  lies 
on  the  surface  here.  As  Dr  Polle  remarks,  the  illiterate 
peasant  hardly  believes  in  the  actual  existence  of  foreign 
languages,  preferring  to  look  upon  even  the  most  unintel- 
ligible of  them  as  distortions  of  his  own  speech  (499,  pp. 
24-27). 

The  savage,  if  the   present  writer's  experience   does   not 


154  1'^^^  CHILD 

deceive  him,  is  less  prone  to  take  such  views,  either  of  par- 
ticular words  or  of  particular  languages.  He  will  admit  that 
water  can  be  named  by  another  word  than  that  which  belongs 
to  his  own  tongue,  and  will  admit  also  the  independent 
existence  of  other  forms  of  speech  than  his  own.  There  are 
many  exceptions,  but  it  requires,  perhaps,  the  isolation  of  the 
peasant  and  his  mental  indolence,  or  a  dash  of  civilisation, 
such  as  the  earliest  Greeks  had,  to  deliberately  use  such 
expressions  as  ^dplSapoi  and  the  like.  The  use  of  language 
is  too  well  understood  by  most  primitive  peoples  to  be 
so  despised  even  when  heard  upon  the  lips  of  a  stranger. 
In  fact,  the  very  multitude  of  languages  in  the  earlier 
history  of  the  race,  and  the  nomadic  character  of  many 
of  the  earliest  groups  of  men,  together  with  the  great  native 
ability  for  language  acquirement,  an  art  highly  valued 
when  other  arts  were  'few  and  far  between,'  tended  to 
inspire  interest  in,  or  respect  for,  rather  than  despisal  of 
alien  speech.  Woman's  great  share  in  the  origin,  develop- 
ment and  diffusion  of  language  —  both  her  cosmopolitan 
and  her  conservative  instincts  —  served  in  the  same  cause, 
and  strengthened  the  feeling  for  the  toleration  of  others' 
speech. 

To  the  peasant  the  name  IVasser  means  7vafer,  and  in 
itself  carries  no  specific  characteristic  of  the  object  named. 
Both  the  child  in  his  invented  names  and  the  ignorant 
peasant  in  his  received  names  are  often  on  an  entirely 
different  plane  from  that  of  the  savage,  with  whom  names 
are  very  frequently  word-pictures  of  the  things  denoted 
by  them.  In  the  days  when,  as  Max  Miiller  has  it,  every 
root  was  significant,  the  associations  these  words  evoked 
must  have  kept  men  from  falling  into  the  condition  of  the 
Austrian  peasant. 

Nevertheless,  many  savages  do  have  the  idea  of  the  indis- 
soluble oneness  of  name  and  thing,  as  the  religion  and  mytho- 
logies of  primitive  races,  and  of  our  own,  in  the  earlier  stages  of 
its  existence,  amply  testify. 

The  folk-lore  of  the  word,  the  primitive  philosophy 
of  the  Xo/oc,  is  exhaustively  treated  by  Ferdinand  von 
Andrian  in  his  essay  on  'Word-superstitions'  (9),  where 
he  has  gathered  together  a  mass  of  data  from  all  ages 
and  peoples  relative  to  the  nature  and  power  of  the 
word    spoken    and    written,    understood    and    unintelligible, 


THE    LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD  155 

significant  and  meaningless,  shouted  and  whispered,  sacred 
and  profane,  old  and  new,  harsh  and  gentle,  alone 
and  in  a  sentence,  single  and  repeated,  forwards  and 
backwards,  jjermanent  and  mutable,  helpful  and  injuri- 
ous— all  evidencing  the  truth  of  the  declaration  of 
Freidnnk : — 

Knit,  Sterne,  unde  wort 

diu  hant  an  kreften  grozen  hort. 

Herbs,  stars,  and  words 

Of  powers  they  have  great  hoards. 


Words  can  take  away  the  mind  of  man,  the  sharp- 
ness of  the  sword,  the  burning  power  of  red-hot 
iron,  make  trees  fall,  mountains  open,  rocks  move 
apart,  rivers,  lakes  and  seas  divide.  Words  can  bring 
fortune  and  ill-fortune,  influence  the  gods,  charm  spirits, 
elfs  and  fairies,  summon  up  and  drive  away  imps  and 
devils,  still  wind  and  wave  or  call  them  up  again.  Power- 
ful, all-eflficient  is  the  mere  utterance  or  use  of  the  charm- 
word  though  priest,  hunter,  witch,  lover  know  nothing  of 
its  real  import.  The  word  of  the  mouth  and  the  word 
of  the  hand  have  gone  on  parallel  lines,  the  meaning 
of  the  swastika  is  often  as  Utile  understood  as  that  of 
the  'open  sesame.' 

The  French  idioms  whose  disjecta  membra  appear  in  our 
modern  novels  and  legislative  addresses,  the  Latin  in  the 
ignorant  physicians'  prescriptions,  the  Sanskrit  words  written 
with  Chinese  signs  by  the  Buddhists  of  the  Celestial  Em- 
pire, the  mystic  syllables  handed  on  from  one  religion  to 
another,  the  reverence  of  many  existing  savage  and  barbar- 
ous tribes  for  anything  written,  the  inscribing,  carving,  and 
stamping  of  names  in  out-of-the-way  and  inaccessible  places 
no  less  than  in  public  and  private  haunts,  all  testify  how 
far  men  still  are  from  giving  up  all  superstition  of  the  kind 
suggested  by  the  thought :  '  In  the  beginning  was  the  word, 
and  the  word  was  God.' 

The  '  magic  of  the  word '  often  brings  childhood  and 
savagery,  or,  at  least,  barbarism,  very  close  together;  both 
the  child  and  the  primitive  man,  in  the  exuberant  exercise 
of    a    new   power,    are    word-worshippers,    and    words,    with 


156  THE  CHILD 

meaning  or  without,  are  alike  precious  to  both.  It  seems 
also  that  concomitant  action  (religious  rites,  games,  political 
meetings,  social  gatherings,  etc.),  not  only,  as  Noire  and 
others  would  have  us  believe,  called  forth  language  itself, 
but  has  also  served  to  keep  much  of  it  primitive  and  almost 
unmeaning  from  the  earliest  ages  down  to  the  present  time. 
Especially  has  this  been  the  case  when,  by  reason  of  the 
employment  of  adults  in  other  ways,  certain  concomitant 
actions  have  been  left  altogether  to  children. 

Between  the  folk,  the  savage  and  the  child,  the  chief 
points  of  resemblance  with  respect  to  the  various  phenomena 
of  word-use  now  under  discussion  seem  to  lie  in  the 
feeling  for  the  power  of  the  word,  the  frequent  neglect 
of  sense  for  sound,  the  keen  sense  of  the  belonging  to- 
gether of  name  and  object  or  thing,  person,  or  place 
named,  the  '  painful  exactness '  of  formulas,  and  some- 
times even  of  the  minutiae  of  pronunciation,  accent, 
etc.,  the  attribution  of  some  knowledge  of  some  sort  of 
speech  to  everything  in  the  world,  the  ingenuity  displayed 
in  the  invention  of  nicknames,  and  the  multiplication  of 
the  names  of  objects  or  persons  liked  or  disliked,  loved  or 
feared,  taboos,  omissions,  and  suppressions  of  the  names  bad 
or  good. 

Speech  Disturbances  and  Child-Speech. — Certain  of  the 
phenomena  resulting  from  speech-disturbances  in  adults 
are,  outwardly  at  least,  identical  with  the  language-play 
so  common  in  young  children.  Of  this  type  is  often  the 
'  verbigeration '  common  in  patients  suffering  from  kata- 
tonia,  which,  according  to  some  authorities,  resembles  the 
chatter  and  word-repetitions  of  primitive  peoples.  Drs 
Peterson  and  Langdon,  ^  in  their  study  of  katatonia,  say 
concerning  a  woman  of  thirty-one :  '  She  began  to  recite 
all  day  long,  every  other  day,  with  great  rapidity,  and 
with  infinite  variations,  in  rhymes  of  unintelligible  words 
as  follows  :  "  Moccasins,  voccasins,  doccasins,  crockasins, 
lockasins,  tockasins,  jockasins,  hockasins ;  babies,  tables, 
gabies,  babies,  sabies,  labies,  mabies,  kabies ;  nobis,  gobis, 
jobis,  chobis,  sobis,  pobis ;  tikater,  fikater,  sikater,  likater, 
mikater,"  and  so  on,  ad  infinitum.  She  changed  to  an- 
other word  only  when  the  possibilities  of  rhymes  were  ex- 
hausted.' A  few  months  later  'she  gave  up  the  rhyming 
1  Med.  Rec,  N.  Y.,  Vol.  LH.  p.  476. 


THE   LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD  157 

assonances  and  returned  to  the  old  phrase,  with  occasional 
variations :  "  I  want  to  go  home  to  my  children  in  New 
York ;  won't  I  be  glad  when  I  get  home  to  my  children 
in  New  York !  What  good  times  I'll  have  when  I  get 
home  to  my  children  in  New  York  !  .  .  .  to  my  cosy 
home  in  New  York  .  .  .  When  I  get  into  the  car  which 
takes  me  to  my  husband  and  children  in  New  York."  This 
was  the  refrain  for  many  months,  on  alternate  days,  accom- 
panied as  before  by  rhythmic  gestures  of  both  arms  in  the 
supposed  direction  of  New  York.'  Another  patient,  a  man  of 
fifty-five,  had  not  spoken  for  three  weeks,  'except  to  repeat 
constantly  meaningless  syllable  combinations,  like,  "  Oh ! 
warmee,  oh !  warmee,  oh !  warmee ;  oh !  huminum,  oh ! 
huminum,  oh  !  huminum ;  oh  !  wow  wow  woro,  oh  !  wow 
wow  woro ;  oh  !  wody  wody  wody,  oh  !  wody  wody  wody, 
oh !  wody  wody  wody ;  oh !  kody  body,  oh !  kody  body, 
oh  !  kody  body ;  oh  1  widdy  widdy,  oh  !  widdy  widdy ;  oh  ! 
hum  yankum,  oh!  hum  yank-um,  oh!  hum  yank-um.'" 
These  words  were  uttered  'with  greater  or  less  rapidity, 
in  varying  keys  and  with  strange  gesticulations  and  great 
earnestness  of  manner  for  15  or  20  minutes,  when  he  would 
be  silent  for  some  hours  and  then  start  off  with  another 
combination.' 

Dr  Ales  Hrdlicka  (307,  p.  385),  who  has  made  a  special 
study  of  'Art  and  Literature  in  the  Mentally  Abnormal,' 
based  upon  data  obtained  from  various  institutions  for  the 
feeble-minded,  epileptic  and  insane  in  the  State  of  New  York, 
maintains  that  '  the  insane  or  the  epileptic  genius  is  a  thing 
largely  of  romance,  or,  at  least,  is  not  to  be  found  in  the 
state  institutions  for  these  classes  of  patients,'  and  there- 
fore, 'the  study  of  art  and  literature  among  the  various 
classes  of  the  mentally  abnormal  resolves  itself  principally 
into  a  study  of  the  effects  of  the  various  abnormal  mental 
conditions  on  the  previously-acquired  abilities  of  the  in- 
dividual, and,  additionally,  into  a  study  of  what  can  be 
effected  by  training  with  some  classes  of  patients  in  these 
conditions.' 

The  neologisms  of  the  insane,  which  have  been  studied  by 
Tanzi  (627),  their  compound  words,  nonsense-syllables,  etc., 
offer  another  field  for  comparison  with  the  speech-phenomena 
of  children  and  of  primitive  peoples. 

The  soliloquy  of  the  insane  has  been  investigated  very  re- 


158  THE   CHILD 

centlyby  Professor  A.  Raggi,  ^  who  found  it  to  be  substantially 
the  same  in  context  with  the  ordinary  language  of  the  patient, 
and,  except  for  excessive  animation  and  gesture-action,  diflfering 
in  little  from  that  of  normal  individuals.  The  soliloquy  of  the 
insane  (not  the  result  of  artifice  or  simulation)  differ  from  the 
other  modes  of  speech  in  being  disconnected  with  the  purpose 
for  which  speech  is  meant  to  function.  It  occurs  rather  more 
often  in  women  (40  per  cent.)  than  in  men  (32  per  cent.),  and 
'occurs  both  by  day  and  by  night  most  commonly,  rarely  by 
night  alone,  and  is,  perhaps,  rarer  rather  than  more  frequent 
with  the  insane  than  with  the  sane  during  sleep.'  Data  for 
comparison  of  the  soliloquy  of  the  insane  with  the  soliloquy  of 
the  child  are  not  as  yet  forthcoming.  The  numerous  studies 
of  the  various  forms  of  aphasia  and  other  disturbances  of 
language  have  resulted  in  the  accumulation  of  many  facts, 
which  have  been  held  to  make  for  the  parallelism  of  certain 
linguistic  phenomena  in  the  child,  the  savage,  and  the  patient 
whose  speech-functions  have  been  disturbed.  It  is  maintained 
also  that,  in  the  gradual  disappearance  of  language  in  the 
adult  suffering  from  such  linguistic  disturbances,  the  more 
concrete,  the  latest-acquired  parts  of  human  language,  are  the 
first  to  be  lost,  the  more  abstract  and  symbolic,  the  latest  and 
best  organised,  being  the  last  to  give  way.  Nouns  disappear 
before  verbs,  adjectives,  pronouns,  adverbs,  prepositions  and 
conjunctions;  and  written  language,  of  course,  suffers  more 
than  oral  speech  (377,  p.  425). 

The  existence  of  a  parallel  between  the  imperfections  of 
the  language  of  the  learning  child  and  the  pathological  pheno- 
mena in  the  speech  of  adults  whose  language-functions  had 
been  disturbed  is  stated  by  Preyer  (5 11,  p.  1 16)  in  the  following 
terms : — 

'When  an  adult,  in  consequence  of  a  stroke  of  apoplexy, 
lesion,  or  any  cerebral  disease,  disorder  of  hearing,  derange- 
ment of  the  functions  of  the  larynx,  or  of  the  tongue,  lips,  or 
even  teeth,  is  deprived  of  the  right  use  of  speech,  then  the 
disturbances  of  speech  which  have  been  carefully  observed  by 
various  clinicists  are  not  merely  somewhat  similar  in  general, 
but  are  identical  with  those  of  the  child  just  learning  to 
speak.'  The  faults  of  speech  in  the  adult  here  occur 
'because  his  speech  mechanicism  is  no  longer  normally 
constructed,'  while  the  incorrectness  of  the  child's  speech  and 
^  Manicomio^  1898,  p.  421. 


THE   LANGUAGE   OF    CIIILDPIOOD 


159 


understanding  of  speech  is  due  to  the  fact  that  'his  small 
.speech  apparatus  is  not  yet  fully  developed  in  all  its 
parts.' 

Compayre  (123,  p.  213)  also  notes  this  'striking  parallel'; 
in  all  the  forms  of  ajjhasia,  'whether  by  lesion  of  the  organs, 
by  enfeeblement  of  the  intelligence,  or  by  defect  of  will-control, 
the  adult  may  relapse  into  those  peculiarities,  which,  in  the 
child,  mark  the  first  attempts  at  speech,  and  reproduce  them 
in  a  sort  of  caricature  ' — but  what  is  disease  with  the  one  is 
only  lack  of  power  with  the  other,  and  the  progress  of  the 
child  step  by  step  up  the  grades  of  speech  is  as  charming  as 
the  spectacle  of  the  morbidly  fatal  despoilment  of  the  adult  of 
bit  after  bit  of  his  language  is  painful.  Between  the  two  lies 
all  the  difference  between  decay  and  play ;  there  is  never  quite 
a  perfect  resemblance  between  the  logorrhcea  of  the  insane  and 
the  chatter  of  the  child,  between  the  silence  of  the  latter  and 
that  of  the  melancholiac— for  human  genius  is  ever  in  the 
child. 

Dr  H.  T.  Lukens  (377,  p.  427)  has  compiled  the  following 
table  (based  upon  the  data  in  Ross's  Aphasia  and  upon  the 
records  of  child-speech)  to  show  the  '  close  agreement '  be- 
tween the  progressive  development  of  the  speech-disturbances 
in  the  adult  and  the  development  of  language  with  the 
learning  child : — 


Sta^e. 

Adult  (Aphemic). 

Stage. 

Child  (Learning  to  Speak). 

5 

Grunting  sounds,  and  syl- 

I. 

Automatic  cries  and  reilex 

labic     utterances     not 

or  impulsive  sounds. 

forming  any  word. 

4 

Occasional  and  recurring 

II. 

Imitation   of  sound,    but 

utterances  of  no  speech 

without      meaning  ; 

value. 

child  babbles  back 
when  addressed. 

3 

A  few  intelligent  replies 

III. 

Understands   words,    but 

to   questions  in   single 

does  not  yet  speak  be- 

words. 

yond  such  words  as 
'mamma,'  '  papa,' '  no,' 
etc. 

2 

Repetition  of  words  and 

IV. 

Repeats   words    as    signs 

reading  aloud. 

%\hen  they  are  said  to 
him. 

I 

Spontaneous  vocal  speech 

\\ 

Uses  words  to  express  his 

in  sentences. 

thoughts. 

l6o  Tllli   CHILD 

We  need,  however,  more  data  for  the  thorough  interpreta 
tion  of  this  parallel  between  the  child's  progress  from 
automatic  and  rcdcx  (instinctive)  phonetic  heterogeneity  to 
the  thought-words,  and  that  of  the  aphemic  adult  from 
the  sentence  to  tlie  wordless  grunt,  the  progress  of  evolu- 
tion and  the  regression  of  degeneracy.  Some '  writers, 
upon  uncertain  evidence,  have  credited  savage  peoples  with 
a  form  of  speech  belonging  to  the  lowest  group  of  stages 
indicated  in  the  table  above,  but,  so  far  as  known,  there 
exists  no  tribe  of  men  upon  the  globe  without  a  language 
much  better  organised  than  the  beginning  of  the  child's 
or  the  end  of  the  adult's. 

Vocabulary. — In  his  Lectures  on  the  English  Language, 
published  in'  1862,  Professor  G.  P.  Marsh  made  (p.  181) 
the  statement  that  'few  writers  or  speakers  use  as  many 
[words]  as  10,000 ;  ordinary  persons  of  fair  intelligence 
not  above  3000  or  4000 ' ;  while  occasionally  one  person 
might  be  able  to  use  50,000,  or  half  of  the  English 
words  then  reckoned  to  be  in  vogue.  This  statement 
induced  Professor  E.  S.  Holden  (301,  p.  16)  to  make  a 
careful  inquiry  into  the  state  of  his  own  vocabulary,  taking 
a  'word'  to  be  *  a  symbol  printed  in  capital  letters  in 
Webster's  Dictionary,  edition  of  1852.'  Marsh  afterwards 
explained  his  'word'  to  be  the  philological  term,  by 
virtue  of  which  only  the  simple  and  not  the  inflected  form 
of  the  vocables  was  counted.  Holden's  conclusion — he 
estimated  his  own  at  33,456,  and  discovered  that  the 
vocabulary  of  the  assistant  librarian  in  the  Patent  Office 
was  larger  than  his — was  that  '  30,000  words  is  not  at  all 
an  unusual  vocabulary.'  For  comparative  purposes  he  esti- 
mated the  vocabulary  of  Shakespeare  (minus  all  verbs  spelled 
like  nouns),  from  Mrs  Clarke's  Coticordance,  to  amount  to 
24,000  words ;  Milton's,  from  Cleveland's  Concordance,  for 
the  poems  alone  (the  prose  would  give  a  larger  number), 
17)377  ;  the  English  Bible,  from  Cruden's  Co?icordance,  7209 
(exclusive  of  proper  names)  ;  Bosworth's  Dictionary  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  Language  (which  contains  'few  words  not  in 
full  use  before  iioo  a.d.'),  11,913;  Hotten's  Dictionaty  of 
Slang,  10,000.  Holden's  conclusions  have  been  verified, 
so  far  as  the  vocabulary  of  a  professional  man  is  con- 
cerned, and  the  statement  can  safely  be  made  that  '  many 
men  have  vocabularies  of  over  30,000  words.'     There  seems 


THE   LANGUAGE  OF   CHILDHOOD 


l6l 


little  foundation  then  for  the  opinion,  common  at  the  time, 
that  'a  child  uses  less  than  looo  words,  an  ordinary  man 
uses  from  3000  to  4000,  an  accomplished  writer  about 
10,000.' 

Mr  E.  A.  Kirkpatrick  ^  estimates  his  vocabulary  of  words, 
whose  meaning  was  known  to  him  at  sight,  at  70,000 
words,  the  number  of  really  different  words  being  about 
35,000.  Mr  Kirkpatrick  mentions  the  fact  that  the  vocabu- 
laries of  specialists  are  very  large,  'a  well-read  botanist 
having  a  technical  vocabulary  of  10,000  words,  and  a  zoo- 
logist an  e\en  greater  number.'  Robinson  Crusoe,  a  book 
which  *  children  of  ten  to  twelve  years  read  with  pleasure, 
and  have  pretty  clear  ideas  of  the  meaning  of  nine  out 
of  ten  of  the  words  used  in  it,'  contains  not  less  than  5000 
to  6000  words. 

In  his  essay  on  '  Language  and  the  Linguistic  Method,' 
Professor  S.  S.  Laurie  made  the  following  statement :  '  In  the 
child  up  to  the  eighth  year  the  range  of  language  is  very  small ; 
he  probably  confines  himself  to  not  more  than  150  words.' 
\\' hen  criticised  by  Mr  Salisbury  for  so  extraordinary  a  state- 
ment. Professor  Laurie  offered  the  explanation  that  the  idea 
was  originally  due  to  Max  Miiller,  and  he  thought  that  '  the 
child  probably  confined  himself  to  150  words  in  ordinary  con- 
versation,' an  observation  which  did  not  mend  matters  much 
According  to  Mr  Salisbury  (561,  p.  290),  the  carefully  checked- 
off  vocabulary  of  his  little  boy,  when  5^  years  of  age,  consisted 
of  1528  '  understandingly  used'  words,  not  counting  participles 
and  (except  in  the  case  of  pronouns)  inflected  forms.  More- 
over, the  mother's  record  of  the  same  child's  vocabulary,  when 
32  months  old,  counts  up  to  642  words. 

The  following  list  of  words  in  child  vocabularies,  from 
Tracy's  data,  indicates  the  great  variation  existing  between 
the  number  of  words  used  by  children  of  like  ages,  sexes, 
environments,  etc. : — 


Sex   .  .  . 

— 

— 

— 

— 

R. 

R. 

B. 

B. 

B. 

B. 

G. 

G. 

G. 

G. 

G. 

G. 

G. 

G. 

G. 

G. 

Age  (months) 

9 

12 

12 

'5 

12 

19 

24 

24t 

28 

30 

17 

21 

22 

22 

23 

24 

24 

25 

27 

28 

Vocabulary  . 

9 

10 

8 

0 

4 

144 

139 

285t 

677 

327t 

35 

177 

28 

69 

136 

36 

263 

250 

171 

451 

^  Science,  Aug.  21,  1S91,  p.  107. 


l62  THE   CHILD 

Preyer  (511,  p.  120),  from  the  examination  of  the 
vocabularies  of  nine  children  (girls  8,  boy  i)  two  years 
of  age,  found  the  number  of  independent  words  used  by 
them  to  vary  from    a   minimum  of    173  to   a    maximum    of 

1 121. 

Many  of  the  strange  ideas  concerning  the  languages 
of  primitive  peoples  are  to  be  traced  back  to  the  com- 
parative philologists,  who  write  of  the  scanty  vocabulary 
of  miners  and  peasants,  and  of  savage  peoples  who 
cannot  speak  in  the  dark  because  their  gestures  could 
not  be  seen.  Max  Miiller,  e.g.,  while  he  admits  that  the 
English  Dictionary  contains  250,000  words,  holds  that  'for 
all  the  ordinary  purposes  of  life  a  dictionary  of  4000  words 
would  be  sufficient,'  and  that  'most  of  us  never  use 
more  than  3000  or  4000  words,  and  we  are  assured  that 
there  are  peasants  who  never  use  more  than  300  or  400.' 
To  be  sure,  he  says  likewise  (450,  p.  11):  'This  does 
not  mean  that  they  would  not  understand  more  than  that 
number,  for  the  Bible  which  they  hear  in  church  contains 
about  6000  words.  These  they  would  understand  more  or 
less  accurately,  though  they  would  never  think  of  using 
them.' 

Vocabularies  of  Primitive  Speech.— Y{o\^  utterly  unfounded 
some  of  these  ideas  are,  even  a  casual  glance  at  the 
lexicographical  results  of  the  philological  researches  among 
the  American  aborigines  alone  would  serve  to  show. 
The  approximate  number  of  words  in  certain  Indian 
dictionaries  is  as  follows:  Navaho  (Matthews,  1891), 
10,000;  Cree  (Vegreville,  1865-1879),  17,000;  Montagnais 
(Vegreville,  1891),  18,000;  Dakota  (Riggs,  1852-188—), 
20,000;  Cegiha  (Dorsey,  188—),  20,000;  Blackfoot  (Mac- 
lean, 1887),  25,000;  Tuskarora  (Hewitt,  1886),  30,000; 
Micmac  (Rand,  1849-1894),  30,000;  Yahgan  (Bridge?, 
188—),  40,000;  etc.  Certain  writers,  like  Keane  (322, 
p.  49),  have  seen  fit  to  think  that  some  of  these  primi- 
tive peoples  are  'strangely  credited'  with  such  vocabu- 
laries, but  the  reading  of  Mr  Hale's  excellent  discussion 
of  'Language  as  a  Test  of  Mental  Capacity'  ought  to 
reconcile  them  to  the  right  view  of  the  case.  In  fact, 
the  estimates  in  question  err  in  being  too  small  rather 
than  too  large. 

How   incomplete   some   of  these   dictionaries    really   are, 


THE   LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD  163 

can  be  seen  from  the  confessions  of  the  authors.  Of 
his  Cree  dictionary,  Father  Vegreville  observes :  '  Many 
words  which  might  have  been  included  have  been  pur- 
posely omitted  because  of  their  simple  and  easy  forma- 
tion by  means  of  rules  given  in  the  grammar'  (Pilling), 
and  Vegreville  speaks  of  his  dictionary  of  the  Montagnais 
(an  Athapascan  dialect)  as  'containing  about  18,000  words, 
out  of  which  one  might  form  more  than  100,000  by 
means  of  the  rules  laid  down  in  the  grammar,  third  part.' 
Father  A.  G.  Morice's  dictionary  of  the  verbs  of  the  Carrier 
(an  Athapascan  dialect)  language,  though  embracing",  at 
the  time  noted  by  Pilling,^  only  a — r,  covered  128  pages, 
small  quarto;  while  his  96-page  'grammar  of  the  conjugable 
parts  of  speech  of  the  Carrier  tongue '  contained  '  four 
chapters,  subdivided  into  19  articles  and  132  rules.'  Dr 
Anchorena,  in  his  grammar  of  the  Kechua  language  of 
Peru,  gives  over  600  modifications  of  the  infinitive  of  the 
verb  ?nunay,  'to  love,'  formed  by  the  infixation  of  particles, 
or  the  modification  of  the  vowels  of  the  theme;  while  the 
Abbe  Ferard,  author  of  a  MS.  dictionary  of  the  Ojibwa 
language,  informs  us  that  '  the  number  of  the  roots  [in 
Ojib<\M  a  root  is  properly  the  qualificaiive  applied  to  natural 
objects  to  specify  them]  amounts  to  about  1300,'  while 
'the  number  of  natural  objects  known  to  the  Indians,  and 
employed  in  composition,  that  is,  specified  by  a  qualifica- 
iive, amounts  to  about  445  (493,  p.  192);  and  we  have, 
besides,  all  the  derivative  meanings  of  the  roots  and  the 
composite  words  which  go  to  make  up  the  newer  portions 
of  the  vocabulary.' 

Rev.  A.  G.  Morice  finds  among  his  370  Dene  roots 
separate  terms  for  'the  lying  down  (verbs)'  of — (i)  liv- 
ing animals;  (2)  lifeless  animals  and  their  empty  skins; 
(3)  one  single  object  with  no  striking  characteristic;  (4) 
several  non-particularised  objects ;  (5)  soft  things  (linen, 
tanned  skins,  etc.) ;  (6)  granulous  things  (sand,  sugar, 
etc.) ;  (7)  long  objects,  like  wood ;  (8)  round  (but  single) 
objects;  (9)  liquid  objects;  (10)  coagulated  objects;  (11) 
objects  in  an  uncovered  recipient.  In  the  ordinary  every- 
day vocabulary  of  the  various  dialects  of  the  Athapascan 
family  of  speech  there  exists  'a  prodigious  exuberance 
^  At/mp.  BibL,  p.  73. 

12 


164  THE   CHILD 

of  differentiating  forms.'  Father  Morice,  to  whom  the 
Carrier  dialect  is  ahiiost  his  mother-tongue,  assures  us 
that  'in  spite  of  its  150,000  or  so  verbal  terms,  the 
Carrier  vocabulary  does  not  contain  a  single  genuine 
equivalent  for  "brise  (etre),  to  be  broken.'"  But  it 
possesses  instead  'no  less  than  no  particularising  sub- 
stitutes, not  one  of  which  could  be  indifferently  used 
for  the  other.'  These  no  verbs,  we  are  told,  have 
reference  to — '(i)  The  object  employed  to  operate  the 
breakage,  viz.,  the  fists  or  the  feet,  a  stick,  or  a  whip, 
or  of  the  cause  of  such  action,  as  the  wind,  the 
explosion  of  fire-arms,  etc.) ;  (2)  the  manner  in  which 
the  object  has  been  affected,  that  is,  whether  it  has  been 
broken  in  one  place  or  in  many,  by  the  middle  or 
otherwise,  purposely  or  by  accident,  violently  or  by 
gentle  pressure ;  (3)  the  form  of  the  object  qualified, 
that  is,  whether  it  is  elongated  or  spheroid,  occupying 
a  vast  place  or  not,  etc'  Besides  all  this,  each  of 
these  no  distinct  verbs  'can  be  multiplied  by  four  or 
five,  according  as  we  give  them  the  iterative,  initiative, 
terminative,  etc.,  forms,  whereby  their  signification  is  also 
unchanged.'  And  other  verbs  rival,  and  often  greatly 
exceed  '  in  the  variety  of  their  forms  and  the  precision 
and  nicety  of  their  distinctions,'  the  one  just  noticed 
— the  verbs  of  locomotion  especially.  Says  Father  Morice : 
'  The  single  paradigm  of  the  verb  "  to  go "  includes  in 
my  dictionary  verbs  that  are  totally  different  according  as 
to  whether  the  locomotion  thereby  expressed  takes  place 
on  two  or  on  four  feet;  by  running  or  hopping;  tottering 
as  a  drunk  man,  or  with  the  help  of  a  staff;  creeping 
like  a  snake,  or  jumping  as  a  frog ;  swimming  or  float- 
ing; "packing"  or  skating;  playing  or  in  a  state  of 
madness ;  whistling  or  speaking ;  singing  or  grumbling ; 
laughing  or  weeping ;  in  sleigh  or  canoe ;  paddling  or 
sailing;  diving  down  or  in  parallel  line  with  the  surface 
of  the  water,  etc. ;  also  according  as  to  whether  the  move- 
ment is  that  of  an  empty  canoe,  or  that  of  the  sun,  the 
stars,  the  clouds,  the  wind,  the  snow,  the  rain,  the  water, 
the  earth  {i.e.,  relatively  to  a  person  drifting  down  stream), 
the  fire,  smoke,  fog,  ghosts,  human  mind,  featherdown, 
diseases,  news,  etc. ;  or,  again,  whether  it  is  that  of  an 
object    elongated    or    spheroid,    heavy    or    light,    liquid    or 


THE   LANGUAGE  OF   CHILDHOOD  165 

liquifiable,  granulated,  massive,  soft,  etc.,  etc'  And  further, 
all  these  verbs  are  modifiable  according  to  where  the 
motion  takes  place  (in  fire,  in  water,  etc.).  Lastly,  '  by 
giving  them  the  negative,  usitative,  causative,  causative- 
])0tential,  defective,  reciprocal,  initiative,  terminative  and 
iterative  forms,  each  and  every  one  of  them  will  thus 
be  multiplied  by  the  number  of  forms  assumed.'  Tiiis 
'fecundity  of  the  locomotive  verbal  stems'  is  surpassed  by 
the  '  prodigious  particularising  power  evidenced  by  the 
objective  verbs.'  Of  one  of  these.  Father  Morice  observes : 
'The  single  paradigm  of  the  verb  "to  put"  contains  in 
my  dictionary  (which  could  be  more  comjjlete)  over  3000 
verbs,  all  of  which  differ  in  meaning  as  well  as  in 
material  structure.  And  this  number  is  repeated  in  con- 
nection with  almost  all  the  other  objective  verbs,  which 
are  quite  numerous  ! ' 

Contents  of  Chi/drais  Minds. — What  a  contrast  between 
this  infinite  variety,  which  seems  never  to  stale,  and  the  mono- 
tonous, all-inclusive  'There  it  goes'  of  the  English  boy,  and 
the  '  Fix  it '  of  the  American.  A  parallel  between  the 
Indian  (adult  or  young)  and  the  civilised  child  is  hardly 
possible  here,  nor  does  the  '  everything  goes '  of  the  slang- 
minded  help  us  out.  Had  not  Father  Morice  dwelt  among 
these  Indians  for  more  than  a  dozen  years,  and  did  he 
not  think  in  the  aboriginal  speech,  and  '  speak  Carrier 
more  fluently  than  English,  or  even  my  native  French,' 
we  should  be  astounded  when  he  declares  that  'a  child 
four  or  five  years  old  possesses  these  innumerable  vocables 
well  nigh  as  perfectly  as  does  his  father,  and  knows  his 
intricate  language  infinitely  better  than  any  French  acade- 
mician does  his  own  plain  and  easy  mother-tongue'  (437, 
pp.  178-181).  A  study  of  the  'contents  of  the  minds  of 
Dene  children  would  certainly  reveal  much  of  interest  to 
the  psychologist.' 

Professor  A.  Budilowski,  after  a  careful  investigation 
of  the  Slavonic  speech  in  its  historical  development,  attri- 
butes to  the  'primitive  Slavonic'  575  root-ideas,  distributed 
thus  : — Cosmography,  meteorology,  physics,  geography,  102  ; 
mineralogy,  19;  botany,  185;  zoology,  137;  anatomy  and 
physiology  of  animals,  90;  medicine,  32.1  Souche's  col- 
1  An-h.f.  Anthr.,  XH.  396. 


l66  THE   CHILD 

lection  of  French  proverbs,  popular  sayings,  etc.,  contains 
638  sayings,  of  which  23S  refer  to  animals,  49  to  plants, 
209  to  man,  41  to  agriculture,  weather,  etc.,  and  41  to 
healtli.  We  are  without  corresponding  collections  for 
many  primitive  peoples,  but  they  scarcely  suffer  in  the  com- 
parison, judged  by  the  volumes  of  African  Negro,  Malay 
and  Dravidian  lore  already  published.  Mrs  Bergen's  valu- 
able books  on  Popular  Superstitions^  and  Aiiimal  and 
Plant  Lore,  show  the  extent  to  which  the  child  of  European 
ancestry  has,  in  America,  made  himself  familiar  with  many 
things  in  nature,  as  the  Red  Indian  did  before  him.  The 
vocabulary  he  makes  himself  in  this  communion  with 
nature  often  surprises  parents  and  teachers,  who  find  his 
control  of  words  otherwise  so  small,  and  his  knowledge  of 
other  things  like  it. 

Child  as  La>i^^iiai:^e  Learner. — The  chief  points  emphasised 
by  Egger  in  his  study  of  the  development  of  intelligence  and 
language  in  the  child  are : — i.  The  child  in  the  bosom  of  its 
mother  has  only  a  borrowed  life ;  he  takes  possession  of  new 
life  by  acts  which  reveal  the  animal.  2.  The  dawn  of  real 
intelligence  comes  with  laughter.  3.  The  teacherless  child 
[in  the  beginning]  learns  quickest  and  best,  memory  and 
attention  being  more  than  reason.  4.  The  child's  acquisition 
of  our  language  means  the  unlearning  of  his  own.  5.  Chil- 
dren understand  much  before  they  speak  little,  or  at  all. 
6.  Children  are  very  faithful  to  the  music  of  language,  respect- 
ing the  rule  of  accent  more  than  any  other.  7.  The  mind  is 
the  thing  in  the  child.  8.  When  we  call  the  child  a  little 
man  we  are  right,  for  life  is  complete  at  this  early  age,  neither 
adolescence  nor  maturity  bringing  anything  essential  to  its 
nature,  nor  introducing  into  its  reason  any  new  principle, 
into  its  intelligence  any  new  faculty.  Age  does  nothing  but 
develop  the  pre-existing  forces  of  the  mind.  There  are  many 
interesting  truths  in  this  outline,  although  the  author  goes  out 
of  his  way  somewhat  to  call  the  child  'a  little  man,'  to  whom 
nothing  essential  is  afterwards  added.  One  can  often  agree 
with  Egger  because  he  saw  so  much  of  the  real  development 
of  the  child.  The  fact  that  the  child  in  learning  our  language 
unlearns  his  own,  is  of  great  importance.  In  a  certain  sense 
one  might  generalise  and  say  that  language  in  the  child,  as  a 
living  and  lasting  thing,  is  '  born  of  imitation,'  and  just  as  the 
child  seems  prone  to  choose  a  profession  below  that  of  his 


THE    LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD  167 

parents,  when  inquiry  as  to  his  early  choice  is  made  his 
language  bears  the  same  stamp  of  inferiority.  The  social 
factor,  after  all,  is  perhaps  the  one  most  powerful,  alike  in 
repressing  the  child's  animality  of  speech,  and  in  furthering 
his  humanity  of  language. 

But  not  all  the  child's  original  language  perishes  utterly  even 
with  us.  It  is  worth  noting  that  many  of  the  innovations  and 
changes  which  make  themselves  felt  in  the  living  languages 
to-day,  have,  as  of  old,  the  child-mark  upon  them — those 
things  against  which  the  'purists'  rage  in  vain,  and  of  which 
excellent  examples  may  be  found  in  limile  Deschamel's 
'Deformations  of  French,'  and  Theodor  Mathias's  'Speech- 
life  and  Speech-faults.'  The  child's  predilection  for  slang 
and  linguistic  'short-cuts'  is  in  a  way  justified  by  the  history 
of  the  race. 

From  what  has  gone  before,  one  can  see  how  far  right  and 
how  far  wrong  is  Dr  Hermann  Gutzmann  in  the  parallel  he 
seeks  to  establish  between  the  speech  of  children  and  the 
languages  of  primitive  peoples.  This  parallel  is,  in  brief,  as 
follows  (261)  : — 

A.  Phonetic  :  i.  Reduplication.  2.  Early  use  of  nasals  by 
children,  and  their  very  common  preference  by  certain  savage 
peoples.  3.  Use  at  first  of  explosives  for  fricatives,  as  with 
primitive  peoples.  4.  Late  appearance  of  the  sibilants  of  the 
second  articulation-system,  and  their  absence  in  many  savage 
languages  {e.g.,  certain  Polynesian  tongues).  5.  Use  and 
substitution  of  /  and  r.  6.  Interchange  of  k  and  /.  7.  Early 
occurrence  of  '  clicks,'  and  their  appearance  in  certain  primi- 
tive tongues. 

B.  Speech-form  and  speech-content  :  i.  Limited  vocabu- 
lary, making  necessary  the  aid  of  gesture  and  pantomime. 
2.  Method  of  narration,  with  its  predilection  for  minutise  and 
incidentals  (the  child  here  closely  resembles  the  negro  and  the 
Bakairi  of  Brazil),  3.  Counting.  4.  The  possession,  at  first, 
of  only  designations  for  individual  objects,  and  the  lack,  or 
rare  occurrence,  of  collective  names.     9.  Drawing. 

Some  interesting  points  remain  to  be  discussed  concerning 
oral  and  written  speech. 

Written  Language. — Drawing  is  only  a  primitive  way  of 
writing,  and  might  naturally  be  supposed  to  be  related  in  its 
development  to  the  evolution  of  speech  in  the  child.  The 
parallelism   in    the   stages   of  development   of  language   and 


1 68 


THE   CHILD 


drawing  is  indicated  in   the  following  table  compiled  by  Dr 
Lukens  (378,  p.  86) : — 


Development  of  Drawing. 

Stage. 

Development  of  Speech. 

Automatic  and  aimless  scribble. 

I. 

Automatic  cries  and  reflex  or 
impulsive  sounds. 

Scribbling     localisations     and 

H. 

Imitation  of  sound,  but  with- 

imitations  of  movements  of 

out  meaning  ;  child  babbles 

other  persons'  hands. 

back  when  addressed. 

Understands  pictures,  but  docs 

HI. 

Understands  words,   but  does 

not    yet    draw    beyond    the 

not  yet  speak  beyond  such 

simplest        localisation        of 

words  as  '  mamma,'  '  papa,' 

features  by  scribbling. 

'  no,'  etc. 

Copies  from  others  to  see  how 

IV. 

Repeats  words  as  mere  sounds 

to  get  the  right  effect  in  the 

when  they  are  said  to  him. 

use  of  lines. 

(Brief  stage  and  of  little 
importance.) 

Picture  -  writing,        illustrated 

y. 

Uses    words    to    express    his 

stories,  scenes,  etc. 

thoughts. 

Studies  technique  of  drawing — 

VI. 

Studies  grammar  and  rhetoric. 

perspective,  proportion,  shad- 

ing, etc. 

Dr  P.  Marie,  in  his  psychiatrical  study  of  the  evolution  of 
language,  emphasises  the  fact  that,  while  the  oral  forms  of 
speech  '  enjoyed  a  pre-formed  centre  in  the  brain,  the  written 
forms  had  to  be  content  with  an  adapted  one ' — there  being  no 
real  separate  centre  in  the  brain  for  written  as  contrasted 
with  spoken  language,  much  less  each  modality  of  language. 
Written  language  naturally  follows  and  is  prepared  for  by 
spoken  language  in  the  history  of  the  individual,  as  also  in 
that  of  the  race  {400). 

Reading  and  Writing. — Professor  G.  T.  W.  Patrick,  of  the 
University  of  Iowa,  arguing  upon  neurological,  psychological 
and  anthropological  grounds,  protests  against  the  '  worship  of 
the  reading-book,  spelling-book,  copy-book  and  dictionary,' 
now  so  prevalent  in  the  primary  schools,  with  their  favour- 
ing of  lax  methods  of  study,  weakening  of  memory  and 
retentive  power  (475,  p.  361).  He  advises,  therefore,  the 
postponement  of  the  teaching  of  reading  and  writing  in 
the  schools  until  after  the  child  is  ten  years  of  age.  The 
child  ought  to  follow  the  race  -  history ;  man  has  only 
recently  become   a   reading   and   a  writing  animal,  and   still 


THE    LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD  1 69 

feels  the  strain  of  his  adaptation.  The  child  at  the  age  in 
question  is  no  more  mature  than  the  race  was  when  the  accom- 
modation to  reading  and  writing  began,  and  naturally  rebels 
somewhat  at  the  sedentary  habits,  manual  dexterity,  finely  co- 
ordinated movements,  lessened  memory,  increased  subjectivity, 
reflection,  deliberation,  reason,  etc.,  of  the  school  and  civilised 
life.  To  cite  Patrick's  own  summary  :  '  It  will  demand  a  con- 
siderable maturity  in  the  child  before  he  is  ready  for  that 
which  has  developed  so  late  in  the  history  of  the  race.  The 
language  of  the  child,  like  that  of  the  primitive  man,  is  the 
language  of  the  ear  and  tongue.  The  child  is  a  talking  and 
hearing  animal.  He  is  ear-minded.  There  has  been  in  the 
history  of  civilisation  a  steady  development  toward  the  prepon- 
derating use  of  the  higher  senses,  culminating  with  the  eye. 
The  average  adult  civilised  man  is  now  strongly  eye-minded, 
but  it  is  necessary  to  go  back  only  to  the  time  of  the  ancient 
Greeks  to  find  a  decidedly  relative  ear-mindedness.  Few 
laboratory  researches  have  been  made  upon  the  relative 
rapidity  of  development  of  the  special  senses  in  children, 
but  such  as  have  been  made  tend  to  confirm  the  indications 
of  the  "culture-epochs"  theory,  and  to  show  that  the  auditory 
centres  develop  earlier  than  the  visual.' 

Moreover,  the  period  from  seven  to  eleven  years  is  that 
in  which  the  child  may  with  most  economy  'gain  a  lasting 
knowledge  of  a  foreign  language.'  Mr  Street,  in  his  discussion 
of  'Language  Teaching"  (618,  p.  289),  emphasises  this  point 
also,  when  he  observes :  '  By  the  time  the  child  is  ten ' 
[having  begun  about  5-7]  '  he  will  have  a  sufficient  grasp  of 
one  foreign  tongue  to  permit  the  introduction  of  a  second.' 
Patrick's  contention  that  several  languages  may  be  learned 
orally  by  the  child  before  he  is  set  to  read  or  write  his  own 
or  any  tongue  gains  some  support  from  the  race  analogy. 
Polyglot  speakers  are  very  common  indeed  among  primitive 
peoples.  To  bind  the  child  too  early  to  the  restraints  com- 
pelled by  writing  especially  is  to  diminish  unduly  the  great 
and  useful  role  played  in  the  normal  life  of  the  child  by  talking, 
shouting,  singing,  laughing,  crying,  and  even  sighing  and  yawn- 
ing, which  are  all,  as  Dr  Harry  Campbell  has  pointed  out,  aids 
to  health  and  well-being  of  the  highest  importance.  The  too 
frequent  repression  of  physiological  exertions,  such  as  most  of 
these  phenomena  usually  are,  involving  respiratory  exercise, 
blood-circulation,   rhythmic  compression   and  dilation  of  the 


i;0  THE   CHILD 

pelvic  viscera,  etc., — which  carry  with  them  expenditures  of 
neuromuscular  energy  and  induce  psychic  phenomena,  which, 
in  their  turn,  have  their  physiological  accompaniments, — causes 
the  child  to  suffer  as  much  as  would  the  savage  who  is  similarly 
given  to  these  natural  vents  of  feeling  and  emotion.  The  child 
ought  to  talk  much  and  talk  well  before  he  is  forced  to  write — 
so  often  to  write  only  badly. 

Talking  has  always  been  one  of  the  most  healthy  and  bene- 
ficial human  exercises,  and  in  vocal  utterances  as  compared  with 
writing  there  is  more  play  of  the  physical  effects  of  thought  (as 
Dr  Harry  Campbell  has  observed),  and  modifications  of  voice 
and  gesture  are  almost  infinite.  Talking,  indeed,  makes  up  in 
great  part  for  lack  of  physical  exercise,  and  not  a  little  of 
woman's  health  in  all  lands  and  in  all  ages  is  owing  to  the  fact 
that,  especially  among  primitive  peoples,  she  is  the  linguist,  the 
constant  talker,  if  not  the  ox^X.ox par  excellence.  It  is  also  one 
of  the  greatest  defences  of  childhood.  Dr  Campbell  does  not 
hesitate  to  say  that  the  stimulative  effect  of  'animated  con- 
versation,' and  the  exercise  of  talking  as  an  art,  enables  lawyers, 
ministers,  teachers,  statesmen,  etc.,  to  get  along  without  the 
gymnasium  and  the  other  artificial  stimuli  of  the  present  day, 
and  that,  moreover,  talking  is  distinctly  favourable  to  longevity, 
beneficial  in  cases  of  heart  disease,  and  only  really  exhaustive 
and  dangerous  in  those  nervously  run  down. 

Shouting,  Dr  Campbell  tells  us,  favours  the  development 
of  the  lungs,  accelerating  the  circulation  of  the  blood  and  in- 
creasing the  depth  of  the  respiratory  movements.  Shouting 
and  gesticulation  (Hughlings-Jackson  would  add  even  swearing) 
have  often  markedly  beneficial  physiological  effects ;  t}-e  '  out- 
breaks of  irritability  in  disease  (gout,  etc.) '  are  by  no  means 
always  pathological  in  their  effects,  while  it  is  a  well-known 
fact  that  in  children  (and  often  adults  as  well)  '  passionate  out- 
bursts are  generally  succeeded  by  periods  of  good  behaviour, 
and,  it  may  be,  improved  health.'  As  a  pain-reliever  the  shriek, 
the  groan,  have  been  known  since  the  birth  of  man.  As  ]J)r 
Campbell  remarks,  the  varieties  of  the  shout  and  the  shriek 
are  legion,  and  '  the  shout  of  the  child  at  play,  the  hurrahs 
of  applauding  multitudes,  the  cry  of  the  huntsman,  the  war- 
whoop  of  the  savage,  the  yells  of  an  attacking  force,'  etc., 
may  all  dull  sensibility  or  produce  a  state  bordering  upon 
ecstasy.  And  the  child  ought  to  have  the  full  benefit  of  what 
is  good  in  all  this  at  the  most  natural  time. 


THE   LANGUAGE   OF   CHILDHOOD  171 

Some  valuable  suggestions  are  contained  in  Professor  O.  T. 
Mason's  brief  article  on  the  'Comparison  of  Written  Language 
with  that  which  is  Spoken  only  '  (415,  p.  139).  In  oral  speech 
the  speaker  is  creator  and  destroyer,  the  hearer,  preserver ;  and 
spoken  language  at  any  time  is  the  resultant  of  the  centrifugal 
force  of  speaking,  which  initiates  changes  and  alterations,  and 
the  centripetal  force  of  hearing,  which  makes  for  conserva- 
tism— the  desire  to  speak  at  will,  the  wish  to  be  understood. 
Spoken  language  is  ear-controlled,  written  language  eye-con- 
trolled. In  spoken  language  memory  and  its  resources  hold 
the  combinations  of  roots  or  fundamental  forms  that  are  neces- 
sary for  the  expression  of  the  variety  of  ideas  and  thoughts 
possessed  by  a  people  in  savagery  or  barbarism ;  written 
language  is  the  subsidising  of  memory — 'the  product,  the 
receptacle  and  the  instrument  of  thought,  just  as  a  vase  is  the 
product  of  the  art  of  pottery,  the  receptable  of  the  art  of 
husbandry,  and  an  instrument  in  the  art  of  cookery.'^ 

'  See  A.  F.  and  L  C.  ChamLerlaiii's  S/iidies  of  a  Child  (I'edng. 
Seminary,  Worcester,  Mass.,  1904-1905),  for  new  data  concerning  the 
language  of  an  individual  child.  Also  a  monograph  in  preparation  by  the 
same  authors  on  The  Mind  of  a  Child. 


DRAWING   OF   HEN    BY   SIX-YEAR-OLD   CHILD. 


DKAWING   OF   GROUbE   BY   KOOTEiNAY   INDIAN. 


CHAPTER    VI 

THE   ARTS   OF   CHILDHOOD 

According  to  Miss  Paola  Lombroso  (369,  p.  137),  there  exists 
*  an  interesting  parallel,  or  analogy,  between  the  way  in  which 
the  child  begins  to  speak  and  to  discourse,  and  the  way  in 
which  he  begins  to  compose  and  write.'  When  he  is  begin- 
ning to  speak  the  child  'expresses  himself  in  mere  sketches  of 
ideas,  truncated  simple  propositions,'  succeeding  only  by  slow 
degrees  in  expressing  himself  clearly  and  correctly ;  and  when 
(at  five  or  six  years  of  age)  he  begins  to  compose  and  to  write, 
he  has  to  re-traverse  the  same  road  by  the  same  stages.  The 
themes  and  school-writings  of  young  children  abundantly  prove 
this.  As  the  same  author  says  (369,  p.  138) :  'A  child  of  six 
years,  who  already  will  make  viva  voce  observations  and  state- 
ments of  great  skill,  feels  the  need  of  mincing  in  detail  the 
impressions  which  he  has  to  express  in  writing,  of  simplifying 
them  by  repetition  and  detail.'  There  does  not  seem,  in  fact, 
to  exist  any  correspondence  between  the  intellectual  manifesta- 
tions of  children  at  the  age  of  from  five  to  seven  years  and 
their  writings  at  the  same  period  of  life ;  the  child  who  speaks 
correctly  enough  stumbles  and  hesitates  when  he  comes  to 
write.  As  Miss  Lombroso  remarks  :  'Just  as  in  the  early  times 
of  speech,  when  the  child  thought  of  the  word  boat,  he  had  in 
mind  some  particular  boat,  so,  when  he  comes  to  write  a  letter, 
he  has  in  mind  some  letter  written  by  the  teacher,  and  it  is  a 
long  time  before  he  comes  to  write  a  letter  automatically.' 
Moreover,  'just  as  the  child  at  first  in  speaking  resorts  to 
gesture,  and  tries  only  to  express  simple  ideas  with  concrete 
words  (nouns,  adjective,  verbs, — only  gradually  introducing 
adverbs,  articles,  copulas,  etc.),  so  also  in  beginning  to  write 
he  expresses  simple  relations  and  schematic  observations.' 
The  difficulties  in  the  way  of  learning  to  set  one's  thoughts 
down  in  writing  emphasise  the  position  taken   by  Professor 

^11 


174  THE   CHILD 

Patrick,  which  seems  also  to  be  supported  by  Mosso,  the  great 
Itahan  physiologist. 

Orii^in  of  Music. — From  language  to  music  is  hardly  even 
a  step,  if  we  accept  the  theories  of  some  authorities.  Wallas- 
chek,  following  Gallon's  and  Weismann's  theory  of  the  non- 
heredity  of  acquired  variations,  seeks  to  '  explain  the  progress 
in  music'  \e.s.,  the  rapid  progress  during  the  present  century, 
especially  during  the  last  thirty  years]  '  by  tradition  and  imita- 
tion,' its  origin  and  development,  as  a  necessary  incident  of 
savage  and  barbarous  life,  having  been  due  to  natural  selection 
— the  musical  faculty  serving  to  organise  the  masses  and  facili- 
tate association  in  acting.  'I'he  play  in  peace-time  turns  readily 
to  useful  ability  in  limes  of  need  or  war  (674,  p.  294).  Music, 
like  moral  development,  the  instincts  of  birds,  etc.,  is  perpetu- 
ated and  improved  by  tradition  and  imitation — in  accordance 
witli  the  principle  of  '  objective  heredity,'  as  Wallaschek  terms 
it,  by  which,  e.g.^  'every  progression  in  music  is  at  once  imitated 
and  preserved  objectively  for  later  generations'  (674,  p.  269); 
Wallaschek  finds  the  ultimate  origin  of  music  in  the  'rhyth- 
mical impulse  in  man' — musical  effects,  however,  not  consist- 
ing in  rhythmical  movement /^r  5^,  for  'innumerable  ideas  and 
feelings  become  associated  with  it,  and  give  rise  to  those 
emotions  which  we  on  hearing  it  experience.'  The  sense  of 
rhythm  arises  'from  the  general  appetite  for  exercise,'  a  desire 
whose  'rhythmical  form  is  due  to  sociological  as  well  as  psycho- 
logical conditions.'  That  music  grew  out  of  speech  (as  Darwin 
and  Spencer  have  maintained)  Wallaschek  does  not  believe, 
and  he  also  rejects  the  view  of  the  origin  of  music  which  sees 
its  rise  in  the  bird's  song  of  love  (a  device  to  charm  the  opposite 
sex),  which  reaches  its  acme  in  man.  Some  facts  brought  out 
by  Hudson  and  other  naturalists  are  held  to  weaken  the  bird 
love-song  theory,  which  makes  music  the  product  of  sexual 
selection.  If  music  be  related  to  speech  as  drawing  to  writing, 
the  problem  of  its  origin  and  development  needs  much  further 
study  and  investigation.  Its  growth,  certainly,  has  not  been 
synchronous  and  co-equal  with  that  of  language. 

Music  with  the  Savage  and  the  Child. — Music,  according  to 
Major  J.  W.  Powell,  whose  presidential  address  before  the 
American  Association  at  Toronto,  in  1889,  was  devoted  to 
the  consideration  of  the  'Evolution  of  Music  from  Dance  to 
Symphony,'  has  only  in  the  course  of  long  ages  come  to  be 
'the  language  of  the  emotions  kindled  by  the  glories  of  the 


THE   ARTS   OF   CHILDHOOD  175 

universe.'  Very  late,  with  the  slow  growth  of  culture  and 
human  reason,  have  appreciation  of  the  beauties  of  nature  and 
its  expression  in  music  come  to  be.  Of  the  pains  and 
pleasures,  the  joys  and  sorrows  of  mankind,  and  not  of  the 
music  of  nature  was  the  art  of  music  born.  Its  first  origins 
are  lost  in  the  mist  of  prehistoric  times.  Out  of  the  dance, 
the  earliest  known  esthetic  art,  sprang  music,  and  the  dance 
'has  its  foundation  in  the  physical  constitution  of  man;  it  is 
the  expression  of  the  joy  of  animal  life.'  From  the  dance,  the 
art  of  the  rhythm  of  mere  existence,  to  music,  the  art  of  the 
rhythm  of  living  in  the  highest  human  sense,  is  a  long  road. 
The  stages  in  the  growth  of  music  in  the  race  at  large,  and 
they  are  the  same  in  the  growth  of  the  individual,  have.  Major 
Powell  says,  been  four,  'music  as  rhythm,  music  as  melody, 
music  as  harmony,  music  as  symphony' ;  music  has  developed 
from  the  emotional  nature  of  man,  as  philosophy  has  from  his 
intellectual  nature.  The  origin  of  these  four  stages  is  thus 
explained  :  *  Rhythm  was  born  of  the  dance,  melody  was  born 
of  poetry,  harmony  was  born  of  drama,  symphony  was  born  of 
science.  The  motive  of  rhythmic  music  was  biotic  exaltation  ; 
the  motive  of  melody  was  social  exaltation ;  the  motive  of 
harmony  was  religious  exaltation  ;  the  motive  of  symphony  is 
aesthetic  exaltation.'  Music  began  with  the  activity  innate  in 
man — 'when  the  rhythm  of  motion  became  the  rhythm  of 
emotion.'  Both  the  beginnings  of  music  and  of  musical  instru- 
ments are  bound  up  with  the  dance.  The  dances  of  the 
savage  world  (sylvan  rather  than  savage,  Major  Powell  writes), 
merry,  hearty,  rollicking  and  joyous,  find  their  modern  repre- 
sentatives in  the  ring-games  and  other  plays  of  children 
recorded  by  Mr  Newell  and  Mrs  Gomme:  'Blue-eyed  children 
play  with  the  brown-eyed,  and  brown  eyed  children  play  with 
the  black-eyed,  and  then  all  join  hands  and  play  "ring-around- 
a-rosy";  and  out  of  this  childish  sport,  by  minute  increments, 
musical  rhythm  becomes.'  And  the  dance  made  primitive  men 
one  as  it  now  makes  children  one. 

By-and-by,  as  we  see  again  from  the  games  of  the  children 
of  to-day,  the  expression  of  the  emotions  in  the  dance  rises  to 
the  dignity  of  speech:  'The  leader  repeats  the  words  and  the 
people  chant  the  refrain,  and  more  and  more  he  gains  a  freedom 
in  composition,  and  he  varies  his  chant  with  new  sentences, 
iterating  and  reiterating  the  emotional  theme.  In  this  way 
poetry  becomes,  and  we  have  dancing-master  poets  and  dance 


i;6  THK   CHILD 

songs.  As  the  d.incing-master  poet  varies  his  theme  of  poetry 
so  he  varies  his  theme  of  music,  and  melody  becomes.  Poetry 
and  melody  are  twins  born  of  the  dancing  chant.  'I'luis  it  is 
that  "  ring-around-a-rosy  "  becomes  a  song.' 

The  nonsense-words,  unmeaning  syllables  and  uncouth 
sentences  of  our  children's  game-songs  find  their  parallels  in 
the  same  phenomena  of  savagery,  and  tell  of  th'  ages  that 
passed  before  music  and  poetry  came  really  'to  live  together,' 
before  the  song  which  '  expressed  the  joy  of  exuberant  emotion,' 
was  rightly  married  to  the  dance  which  'expressed  the  joy  of 
exuberant  life.' 

As  men  rise  from  savagery  through  barbarism,  poetry  is 
more  and  more  released  from  Terpsichorean  feet,  and  soars 
into  the  realm  of  ideal  emotion.  Now  men,  women,  children, 
sing  as  they  labour :  '  Priests  sing  as  they  perform  religious 
rites,  women  sing  as  they  grind  at  the  mill,  children  sing  at 
their  sports.' 

Harmony,  too,  gradually  develops  out  of  the  grouping  of 
voices  in  folk-singing:  'The  notes  of  man  are  low  and  re- 
sonant like  the  voices  of  waves  and  winds;  the  notes  of  women 
are  high  and  clear  like  the  voices  of  birds  ;  while  children  pipe 
like  bees.'  In  savagery,  also,  Major  Powell  tells  us,  the  drama 
begins,  and  to  suit  the  actors  harmonious  parts  are  developed 
in  the  singing, — for  the  drama  is  only  the  story  of  creation 
sung, — and  full-fledged  harmony  ultimately  appears.  Again, 
the  song-games  of  children  recall  the  dramatised  myths  of 
the  primitive  peoples  of  all  lands.  Music  has  now  become, 
with  innumerable  variations,  both  profane  and  sacred,  and  runs 
the  gamut  of  all  human  feelings  and  emotions. 

At  last  science  comes  and  gives  music  'a  multitude  of 
sweet  instruments '  and  power,  '  kindled  by  the  higher  intel- 
lectual faculties,'  to  appreciate  all  that  is  good,  beautiful  and 
true  in  Nature  and  in  Nature's  work,  in  man  and  in  the  works 
and  thoughts,  the  dreams  and  ideals  of  man.  Now  '  the 
"ring-around-a-rosy"  has  become  a  symphony,' its  accompani- 
ment a  sublime  poem. 

The  child,  dancing  with  delight  when  he  receives  a  present, 
or  whistling  to  keep  his  courage  up  as  he  goes  through  a  dark 
forest,  or  along  a  gloomy  lane,  represents  that  age  of  the  race 
when  'they  danced  to  their  gods,  and  beat  their  drums  to  their 
gods,  and  played  their  whistles  to  their  gods,  and  blew  their 
horns  to  their  gods,  until  the  winds  stilled,  and  the  storms 


THE    ARTS   OF   CHILDHOOD  I77 

abated,  and  the  lightnings  went  out,  and  the  thunders  hushed, 
and  the  floods  ran  away  to  the  sea,  and  then  they  rejoiced  with 
flashing  and  dancing  and  music' 

The  boy  of  to-day  with  his  noisy  'bull-roarer'  is  the  time- 
softened  embodiment  of  our  ancestors  in  the  days  when  'a 
group  of  naked,  savage  warriors,  intent  on  plunder,  rapine,  and 
the  midnight  murder  of  men,  women  and  children,  gather 
about  the  camp-fire  in  the  weird  dance,  and  leap  and  howl  and 
whip  their  bull-roarer  until  they  work  themselves  into  a  state  of 
fury.'  The  children,  whistling  or  singing  to  dull  the  toothache, 
or  chanting  in  chorus  to  drown  the  cries  or  alleviate  the  pain  of 
a  companion,  take  us  back  to  the  time  when  men  '  by  shrill 
shrieks,  by  mad  howling  and  by  horrid  imprecation '  sought  to 
drive  away  the  disease- producing  spirits,  or  by  the  dance, 
music  and  the  chant  'called  for  the  beneficent  spirits.'  They 
take  us  back  to  the  time  of  which  it  may  be  said  :  Dance  and 
music  are  the  quinine  and  calomel  of  the  savage — the  'water 
cure,' the  'faith  cure,' the  'blue  glass  cure,'  the  'mind  cure,' 
the  'Christian  science  cure,'  the  'youth-restoring  elixir,'  the 
'panacea  for  all  human  ills.' 

When  to-day  the  ring  of  children  dances  around  a  comrade 
who  has  been  hurt,  or  who  does  not  feel  well,  they  are  exercis- 
ing the  therapeutic  art  of  music  known  to  every  primitive  race 
and  praised  in  the  annals  of  medicine  from  ^^sculapius  to 
Dr  Maillet  (197,  p.  339).  The  old  incantation  and  drum-beat- 
ing have  not  yet  lost  their  strength  altogether,  the 'charm 'of 
music  still  seems  to  soothe  (as  well  as  to  excite)  and  to  cure 
others  than  the  child  and  the  savage.  Concerning  this  much 
may  be  read  in  the  book  of  Honnet,  pubHshed  in  1874,  on  the 
Effects  a7id  Influence  of  Music  in  Health  and  in  Disease,  and 
many  subsequent  articles  and  essays. 

Effects  of  Music. — Some  of  the  more  recent  literature  on 
the  faculty  of  music  and  its  pathology  has  been  well  summarised 
by  Dr  G.  C.  Ferrari  (197),  while  to  the  same  investigator, 
together  with  Dr  C.  Bernardini  (50),  we  owe  some  interesting 
experiments  on  the  musical  memory  of  idiots. 

Sollier,  in  his  work  on  the  psychology  of  the  idiot  and  the 
imbecile,  mentions  the  curious  fact  that  'a  liking  for  music  is 
the  only  artistic  trait'  that  these  true  proletarians  of  intelli- 
gence,' as  Ferrari  terms  them,  possess ;  and  he  attributes  it  to 
the  '  sensual '  character  of  music.  Twenty  years  before,  Hugh- 
lings-Jackson  had  observed  that   'idiotic  children,  who  were 


ijS  THE  CHILD 

not  mutes,  could  pronounce  singing  a  larger  number  of  words 
than  they  were  generally  able  to  do  speaking,' and  in  1890 
Knoblaucli  pointed  out  that  'aphasic  subjects'  (not  idiotic) 
were,  under  the  excitement  of  music,  able  to  pronounce  words 
which  they  were  absolutely  unable  to  utter  without  such 
stimulus  '  (197,  p.  316). 

Ivxpcriment  on  a  large  scale  began  in  1889  with  ^\■ilder- 
muth,  who  investigated  the  musical  sense  of  180  idiots  (and 
imbeciles)  and  82  normal  children  (boys).  Ranking  his 
subjects  in  four  classes  from  those  having  'a  good  musical 
disposition '  to  those  characterised  by  '  musical  incapacity,' 
he  found  the  proportions  from  good  to  bad  as  follows : 
Idiots,  27  per  cent.,  36  per  cent.,  26  per  cent.,  11  percent.; 
normal  children,  60  per  cent.,  27  per  cent.,  11  per  cent., 
2  per  cent.  In  other  words,  a  large  proportion  (nearly  one- 
third)  of  the  idiots  possessed 'a  good  disposition  for  music,' 
and  only  11  per  cent,  (as  compared  with  2  per  cent,  of  the 
normals)  were  absolutely  without  musical  ability.  Moreover, 
as  Ferrari  remarks,  the  normal  children  were  taken  from 
a  country  (Germany)  whose  inhabitants  have  generally  a  good 
musical  ear,  and  the  majority  of  them,  unlike  the  idiots, 
had  received  a  certain  measure  of  systematical  musical 
instruction. 

Ireland,^  in  his  study  of  the  musical  faculty  in  cerebral 
diseases,  found  that  idiots,  as  a  rule,  like  to  listen  to  music, 
and,  moreover,  that  even  mute  idiots  sometimes  give  forth 
musical  motives,  while  idiots  belonging  to  families  of  which 
many  members  have  musical  dispositions,  share  in  the  passion 
for  music.  Dr  Ireland's  statement  that  in  mental  disease  the 
musical  faculties  are  the  last  to  disappear,  is,  as  Ferrari  points 
out  (197,  p.  336),  contradicted  by  the  results  of  Dr  Legge, 
who  shows  that  the  musical  faculty  in  dements  disappears 
with  the  other  aesthetic  sentiments  before  the  complete 
diminution  of  the  mental  powers.  Dr  Legge's  researches 
were  published  in  1894,^  and  dealt  with  the  musical  faculty 
of  50  idiots.  Of  these  30  took  some  interest  in  hearing  music, 
while  20  showed  themselves  altogether  indifferent;  15  could 
repeat  certain  tones  without  words,  and  9  repeated  them  with 
words.  We  are  told  further  that  5  could  articulate  words 
well,  but  did  not  at  all  comprehend  them,  while  i  was  a  deaf 
^JoiD'H.  Merit.  Si/.,  1894.  "^ Joiirn.  Metit.  Sc/.,  p,  373. 


THE   ARTS   OF   CHILDHOOD  1/9 

mute.  This  last  once  repeated  a  note  made  by  one  of  his 
companions,  and,  although  in  the  lowest  depths  of  idiocy,  he 
seemed  to  take  pleasure  in  hearing  music,  whilst  preserving  an 
utter  indifference  to  the  noise  going  on  about  him. 

The  experiments  of  Bernardini  and  Ferrari  on  the  memory 
for  music  (notes  and  phrases  sung  to  the  subject  early  in  the 
morning  almost  immediately  after  the  first  meal)  of  idiots 
were  carried  out  on  two  occasions  (20-30  days  apart)  upon 
60  males  and  40  females  in  the  Psychiatric  Institute  of 
Reggio,  Italy.  The  general  results  were  as  follows  (50, 
p.  320):  (i)  Possessing  a  marked  musical  sensibility,  12  per 
cent.  (7  males,  5  females).  (2)  Those  who,  perhaps,  felt 
music,  and  eventually  evince  a  certain  degree  of  musical 
memory,  but  localised  arbitrarily,  and  almost  never  retained, 
20  per  cent.  (11  males  and  9  females).  (3)  Negative: 
(a)  voluntarily  negative,  14  per  cent.  (7  males,  7  females); 
((^)  negative  through  incapacity  or  lack  of  attention,  30  per 
cent.  (22  males,  8  females);  (c)  able  to  repeat  the  rhythm 
only,  9  per  cent,  (3  males,  6  females) ;  {(f)  able  to  repeat  some 
note  beside  the  rhythm,  7  per  cent.  (7  males). 

Of  8  mutes,  the  authors  say  that,  contrary  to  the  results  of 
Ireland,  all  efforts  to  discern  their  sensibility  to  the  sounds  of 
the  pianoforte  were  unsuccessful. 

Newington  explains  the  liking  of  '  idiots  and  others  of  low 
intellectual  development'  for  music  as  'a  ready  means  of 
gratification  of  the  pleasure  sense  which  the  idiot  retains' — 
a  sense-gratification,  the  essence  of  which  lies  in  motion.^ 

Both  with  normal  men  and  animals  tliere  appear  to  be 
considerable  individual  differences  in  the  psychic  and 
emotional  effects  of  music.  This  is  clearly  shown  by  the 
experiments  of  Gilman  and  Downey. 

Some  curious  information  as  to  the  effects  of  music  upon 
men  of  science  and  litterateurs  has  been  collected  by  Dory 
and  Ehrenfreund.  From  their  investigations  we  learn  that 
even  in  Italy,  the  land  of  music  par  excellence  in  many 
respects,  not  a  few  men  of  science  and  of  letters  neither  play 
any  musical  instrument  nor  are  sensitive  to  anything  beyond 
an  admiration  for  music.  Schiaparelli,  the  astronomer,  and 
Mantegazza,  the  physiologist  and  anthropologist,  seem  to 
figure  in  this  list.  The  latter 'adores  music,' but  cannot  tell 
'^Joiint.  Ment.  Sci.,  1897,  p.  717. 

13 


l80  THE   CHILD 

a  waltz  from  a  polka,  and  prefers  the  human  voice  to  all 
instruments.  INIantegazza,  however,  says  that  music  serves 
him  as  an  inspiration  to  write  and  think.  7'his  last  effect  of 
music  is  quite  common  with  non-musical  people.  Indeed,  the 
well-known  stimulating  effect  of  music  upon  physical  labour 
would  suggest  something  similar  in  the  mental  field.  'I'he 
effect  of  music  upon  mental  labour  offers  an  opporlunity  for 
research  of  a  thoroughgoing  kind,  for  although  Honnet  and 
others,  Biicher,  Noire,  etc.,  have  touched  upon  the  topic, 
many  points  yet  remain  to  be  brought  out. 

Primitive  Music. — 'l"he  best  work  on  Primitive  Music  is 
Wallaschek's  exhaustive  essay,  in  which  the  origin  and 
development  of  the  music,  songs,  instruments,  dances  and 
pantomimes  of  savage  races  are  sympathetically  treated. 
Music,  like  speech,  seems  to  be  the  patrimony  of  all  man- 
kind: 'However  far  we  might  descend  in  the  order  of 
primitive  people  we  should  probably  find  no  race  which  did 
not  exhibit  at  least  some  trace  of  musical  aptitude,  and 
sufficient  understanding  to  turn  it  to  account.  In  fact,  it 
would  appear  that  among  races  of  the  very  lowest  order  of 
civilisation  there  are  frequently  to  be  found  some  which  have 
more  musical  capacity  than  many  of  a  higher  order.  This  is 
undoubtedly  the  case  with  the  Bushmen  '  (674,  p.  i). 

In  his  discussion  of  the  origin  and  development  of  musical 
instruments  Wallaschek  rejects  the  theory  that  the  oldest 
instrument  is  the  drum,  while  all  stringed  instruments  are  of 
the  most  recent  origin.  The  oldest  instrument,  he  thinks,  is 
the  flute  (and  the  pipe),  while  the  stringed  bow,  a  very  simple 
instrument,  long  preceded  the  drum.  As  even  our  modern 
phenomena  show,  the  drum  is  an  instrument  needing  co-opera- 
tion for  its  production,  but  the  boy  does  as  the  race  has  done, 
'cuts  his  flute  in  a  few  moments,'  or  makes  his  primitive 
harp  sometimes  as  readily.  Utterly  unjustifiable,  Wallaschek 
thinks,  is  Rowbotham's  theory  of  the  drum,  pipe  and  lyre 
stages  of  musical  development,  corresponding  to  tlie  stone, 
bronze  and  iron  ages.  Drunnning  may  have  been  'the  first 
attempt  at  the  practice  of  music,  or  rather  of  time-keeping, 
but  the  drum  was  by  no  means  the  first  instrument.'  Many 
primitive  tribes,  possessed  of  songs  and  dances,  use  no  real 
musical  instruments  at  all,  'anything  making  a  noise'  being 
used  to  accompany  the  performers — just  as  our  children  are 
wont  to  do  to-day.     The  appreciation  of  European  instruments 


THE   ARTS   OF   CHILDHOOD  l8l 

of  music  in  savage  countries  is  often  very  different  from  what 
it  is  in  civilised  lands  :  the  Australians  were  frightened  by  the 
Scotch  bagpipe ;  in  Tonga,  French  horns  were  particularly 
despised;  the  Fuegians  were  unimpressed  by  the  flute. 
There  is  great  variety  also  in  the  effect  of  European  singing 
upon  savage  auditors:  'God  Save  the  Queen'  set  an 
Australian  to  weeping;  the  '  Marseillaise '  sent  an  Australian 
family  into  whimsical  contortions  and  gestures  of  wild 
enthusiasm,  causing  them  even  to  forget  their  meal. 

Among  many  primitive  peoples  music  is  much  more 
common  and  varied  in  psychical  motive  than  is  generally 
supposed.  What  Sir  George  Grey,  as  cited  in  Wallaschek 
(674,  p.  164),  says  of  the  natives  of  Australia  will  hold  of  not 
a  few  other  primitive  peoples  as  well :  'To  a  sulky  old  native, 
his  song  is  what  a  quid  of  tobacco  is  to  a  sailor ;  if  he  is  angry 
he  sings;  if  he  is  glad  he  sings;  if  hungry,  he  sings;  if  full, 
provided  he  is  not  so  full  as  to  be  in  a  state  of  stupor,  he 
sings  more  lustily  than  ever.'  Primitive  peoples  '  are  highly 
susceptible  to  music ' — both  as  a  stimulus  to  excitement  and 
a  means  of  solace  and  cure  in  illness.  Wallaschek  also 
informs  us  that  'in  some  cases  music  causes  physical  pain, 
and  makes  men  sick  and  unfitted  for  work  for  days  together.' 

Music,  Dance  afid  Song. — Among  other  points  brought  out 
by  Wallaschek  are  these  :  Dance  and  music  go  together  ('are, 
in  fact,  one  act  of  expression,  not  merely  an  occasional  union, 
like  poetry  and  music ').  And  '  women  are  the  most  persistent 
dancers,  and,  as  they  are  the  better  singers  as  well,  prwiitive 
music  owes  its  support  to  a  great  extent  to  women.'  Dances 
are  imitations  of  the  'movements  necessary  in  the  struggle  for 
existence,'  or  of  the  movements  of  animals.  The  musical 
dance-chorus  is  of  a  social  character ;  of  like  origin  is  the 
orchestra,  really  a  very  primitive  institution.  In  the  primitive 
drama,  pantomime,  opera,  the  social  (even  national)  expression 
of  music  reaches  its  highest  point — inter  ca?-mina  silent  arma. 
Professional  composers  and  singers  are  known  from  very  early 
times  and  among  the  most  primitive  races,  and  their  power  in 
politics  has  at  times  been  considerable.  Primitive  races  know 
both  the  major  and  the  minor  key  ;  harmony  and  part-singing ; 
diatonic  and  pentatonic  scales.  The  human  voice  has  not  been 
higher  in  early  times,  '  the  high  pitch  being  merely  due  to  the 
great  excitement  with  which  savages  sing.' 

What  Sir  George  Grey  said  of  the  Australian  ought  to  be 


l82  THE    CHILD 

read  in  connection  with  what  Afiss  Alice  C.  Fletcher,  in  her 
excellent  '  Study  of  Omaha  Indian  Music '  (214),  says  of  the 
American  Indian:  'Among  the  Indians  music  envelops  like 
an  atmosphere  every  religious  tribal  and  social  ceremony,  as 
well  as  every  personal  experience.  There  is  not  a  phase  of 
life  that  does  not  find  expression  in  song.  Religious  rituals 
are  embodied  in  it ;  the  reverend  recognition  of  the  creation  . 
of  the  corn,  of  the  food-giving  animals,  of  the  powers  of  the 
air,  of  the  fructifying  sun,  is  passed  from  one  generation  to 
another  in  melodious  measures  ;  song  nerves  the  warrior  to 
deeds  of  heroism  and  robs  death  of  its  terrors ;  it  speeds  the 
spirit  to  the  land  of  the  hereafter,  and  solaces  those  who  live 
to  mourn  ;  children  compose  ditties  for  their  games,  and  young 
men  by  music  give  zest  to  their  sports;  the  lover  sings  his  way 
to  the  maiden's  heart,  and  the  old  man  tunefully  invokes  those 
agencies  which  can  avert  death.  Music  is  also  the  medium 
through  which  man  holds  communion  with  his  soul,  and  with 
the  unseen  powers  which  control  his  destiny.' 

This  statement  is  confirmed  by  Dr  Franz  Boas '  who  disposes 
of  '  the  often-repeated  statement  that  the  Indian  has  no  sense 
for  music,  and  that  particularly  as  compared  to  the  negro,  he  is 
entirely  lacking  in  musical  genius,'  though  it  is  true  his  efforts 
have  been  devoted  more  to  the  production  of  songs  than  to 
the  invention  of  musical  instruments. 

Miss  Fletcher's  estimate  of  the  role  of  music  among  the 
Omaha  Indians  seems  to  emphasise  what  Wallaschek  says 
about  its  importance  among  primitive  peoples :  '  Primitive 
music  is  not  at  all  an  abstract  art,  but  (taken  in  connection 
with  dance  and  pantomime)  is  a  part  of  the  necessaries  of  life 
(war  and  hunting),  for  which  it  seems  to  prepare  or  to  maintain 
our  strength  and  skill  during  time  of  peace'  (674,  p.  294). 

In  many  respects,  music  may  be  said  to  be  just  as 
important  in  childhood. 

Children  and  Music. — A  very  interesting  essay  by  Miss 
Fanny  B.  Gates  contains  the  results  of  an  examination  of  the 
answer-papers  of  some  2000  school-children  of  New  England 
(100  boys  and  100  girls  of  each  age,  from  seven  to  sixteen 
inclusive)  as  to  their  musical  interests,  favourite  songs,  etc. 
The  author  finds  that  the  elements  of  greatest  importance  in 
the  musical  development  of  the  child  are,  'rhythm,  love  of 
^  Jount.  Amer.  Folk-Lore,  VH.  170. 


THE   ARTS   OF   ClIILDHOOD  1 83 

home,  love  of  country,  melody,  religious  sentiment.  The 
same  qualities  appear  in  the  musical  development  of  savage 
tribes'  (238,  p.  19).  Miss  Gates  cites  with  approval  the 
words  of  Jean  Paul:  'Music,  the  only  fine  art  in  which 
man  and  all  classes  of  animals,  spiders,  mice,  elephants,  fish, 
amphibious  creatures,  birds,  have  a  community  of  goods,  must 
ceaselessly  affect  the  child  who  is  the  spiritual  and  the  brute 
beast  united,'  and  thinks  that  in  the  growth  of  music  we  see 
the  child  repeat  the  history  of  the  race. 

This  author  seems  to  agree  with  Dr  Reissmann  and  other 
German  authorities,  and  President  Hall,  that  mood,  season, 
and  other  factors  in  the  make-up  of  the  child  should  be  taken 
into  consideration,  as  they  have  been  evidently  in  the  history 
of  the  race.  Primitive  peoples  do  not  willingly  sing  love-songs 
out  of  place,  spring-songs  in  the  fall,  war-songs  in  times  of 
profound  peace,  or  satires  at  their  most  solemn  meetings.  Nor 
should  children  thus  digress  from  the  right  way. 

All  investigations  of  the  phenomena  of  music  and  song 
among  children  seem  to  indicate  that  folk-songs  and  the 
cultivation  of  music  by  ear  come  first,  not  the  artificialities  and 
notations  of  the  school.  Song  should  be  free  and  fitted' to  the 
child  mind. 

Primitive  yEsf/ietics. — The  universality  of  a  very  primitive 
sort  of  esthetics  is  thus  described  by  Mr  J.  D.  McGuire,  who 
sees  m  the  child  the  type  of  it  all  (388,  p.  671):  'The  writer 
irnagines  that  the  same  feeling  which  impels  a  small  child  to 
pick  up  a  smooth  pebble  on  the  beach  has  something  to  do 
with  the  fondness  of  adults,  either  savage  or  civilised,  for 
similar  things.  To  the  savage  a  bear's  claw,  an  elk's  tooth, 
or  the  talons  of  an  eagle,  are  evidences  of  skill  expended  or 
bravery  shown.  'Jlie  civilised  man  may  preserve  the  shell,  as 
he  certainly  does  the  pearl  or  the  gold  nugget  set  to  adorn  his 
person.  Tlie  differences  in  society  establish  the  values  of 
jewellery,  and  the  scarcity  of  an  object  makes  it  as  attractive 
to  the  one  race  as  to  the  other.  Throughout  all  periods  and 
conditions  man  appears  to  have  entertained  a  lively  apprecia- 
tion of  the  colours  of  the  rainbow,  the  gay  plumage  of  a 
beautifii!  bird,  the  grace  of  the  cat  tribe,  the  viciousness  of  the 
wolves,  and  the  beautiful  lines  in  nature.  There  is  in  the 
liuman  being  an  instinctive  appreciation  of  beauty  and  fitness 
which  is  not  shared  by  any  of  the  animals.  Fashions  change 
continually,  and  there  are  many  instances   of  an  article'  [the 


184  TH^  CHILD 

ancient  bronze  fibula  and  the  modern  safety  pin,  for  example], 
'common  at  one  period,  but  subsequently  quite  forgotten  be- 
cause of  its  disuse,  which  after  a  lapse  of  ages  has  again  ap- 
peared, possibly  as  the  result  of  an  independent  discovery.' 
So  far  the  anthropologist.  Somewhat  similar  are  the  views  of 
many  modern  psychologists.  Professor  H.  R.  Marsliall  (408, 
p.  loi),  who  holds  that  the  'art  impulse'  is  a  'blind  impulse 
leading  men  to  crea/e  with  little  or  no  notion  of  the  end  they 
have  in  view,'  thinks  that  this  impulse,  so  wonderful  in  some 
of  its  genial  developments,  'is,  in  one  form  or  another,  a 
common  heritage  for  all  members  of  our  race.'  As  Professor 
Marshall  further  says :  '  What  child,  what  savage  does  not 
show  some  tendency  to  use  his  surplus  vigour  in  crude  attempts 
to  produce  works,  which,  in  their  developed  form,  give  us 
our  best  art  products  ?  Almost  every  adult  feels  some  tendency 
to  write  verses  or  to  compose  melodies,  or  to  dabble  with  the 
brush  and  palette,  or  to  represent  his  thoughts  with  the 
draughtsman's  pencil.' 

l"he  spontaneity  of  art  is  greater  than  age,  or  sex  or  race, 
but  its  expression  is  diversely  controlled  by  these  and  other 
factors  of  human  individual  and  social  development  much 
more  than  its  origin. 

To  some  of  the  most  primitive  races  of  men,  the  rude  be- 
ginnings of  the  education  we  seek  to  convey  at  the  present 
time  by  means  of  picture  galleries,  art  museums,  photographic 
and  stereopticon  exhibitions,  came  through  their  implements 
and  weapons,  which  were  often  travelling  museums  and 
libraries  as  well. 

Of  the  ornamentation  upon  the  drill-bows,  a  characteristic 
instrument  of  the  Eskimo,  Mr  J.  U.  McGuire  writes  (388,  p. 
720):  'The  ornamentation  upon  the  ivory  drill-bows  is  ex- 
tremely varied  in  its  range,  from  mere  scratches  or  notches 
made  in  the  ivory  to  ornamented  carving  and  etching.  These 
designs,  etchings  and  carvings  appear  to  constitute  quite  an  ela- 
borate aboriginal  school  of  art.  At  one  place  we  encounter  bows 
covered  v/ith  lines,  circles,  angles  or  curves,  drawn  with  pre- 
cision and  elaborated  carefully.  In  another  place  we  see 
animal  life  portrayed  with  remarkable  fidelity  to  nature ;  hunt- 
ing and  trapping  scenes  are  delineated  with  minute  precision, 
and  caricatures  of  daily  life  are  often  portrayed  with  no  mean 
artistic  ability.  These  drawings  often  show  a  keen  appreciation 
of  the  ludicrous. 


TME  ARTS   OF   CHILDHOOD  1 85 

'These  drill-bows  have  on  them  pictures  of  youth  and  old 
age ;  and  from  the  frequent  occurrence  of  dances  and  games 
etched  into  the  ivory,  we  can  see  at  a  glance  that  these  hyper- 
boreans enjoyed  at  times  pleasures  with  which  their  lives  are 
not  generally  supposed  to  be  associated.  On  these  bows  are 
seen  whales  floating,  diving  and  spouting,  as  well  as  the  dead 
animal  being  dragged  to  the  ice.  Seal  and  walrus  hunting 
scenes  are  well  shown.  Porpoise  in  schools  ;  ducks  flying  in 
bunches ;  deer  feeding  and  running ;  the  setting  of  traps,  and 
the  animals  caught  in  them,  are  often  seen,  and  no  drawings 
appear  more  common  than  do  those  representing  the  dragging 
to  shore,  or  to  the  ice,  of  captured  game.' 

Indeed,  it  would  be  possible,  from  a  study  of  drill-bow 
etchings,  'to  understand  the  daily  life  of  these  people.'  Here 
is  a  widespread  source  of  education  in  art  and  the  science  of 
life,  and  we  know,  moreover,  that  with  many  peoples,  minia- 
tures of  these  implements  and  instruments  were  made  to  serve 
as  toys  and  playthings  for  their  children. 

Oi-nameniation.  —  'The  mania  for  ornamentation,'  says 
Mongeolle,  'is  as  old  as  humanity';  prehistoric  man,  as  far 
back  as  we  can  trace  him,  knew  somewhat  of  the  art.  The 
origin  of  ornament  is  to  be  sought  in  '  social  inequality,'  and 
the  '  democratic  equality,'  to  which  the  world  is  tending,  has 
been  accompanied  by  a  decrease  in  the  '  orgie  of  ornament,' 
which  has  been  parallel  with  the  rise  in  culture  and  civilisation. 
In  savage  and  barbarous  races  men  and  women  have  vied  with 
one  another  in  mutilating  nose,  lips,  teeth,  genitals,  and  other 
organs  of  the  body,  until  these  have  come  to  resemble  more 
the  rudimentary  and  vestigial  ancestors,  or  shrunken-up  remains 
of  the  parts  in  question,  rather  than  their  full-functioning  evolu- 
tionary equivalents.  They  have  assumed  the  skin,  the  claws, 
the  teeth,  the  face-mask  of  the  fierce  creatures  they  have  slain, 
or  the  gentler  ones  they  have  tamed.  And  when  man  came  to 
be  the  great  enemy  of  man,  and  the  struggle  was  between  men 
and  men,  the  star  of  the  warrior  rose  as  that  of  the  woman 
fell.  Tattooing,  painting,  scarifications,  etc.,  simulated  the 
enemy  dead  and  gone,  his  blood,  the  wounds  of  battle.  As 
man  has  formerly  clothed  himself  in  the  wild  beast  he  had 
slain,  so  in  some  fashion  he  did  now  with  the  man  he  had 
killed — the  teeth,  bone,  fingers,  skin  of  the  fallen  foe  served 
him  for  ornament,  as  had  done  before  the  bones,  teeth,  claws 
of  animals.     When  the  metallic  arts  began  to  develop,  imita- 


1 86  THE   CIIILt) 

tions  took  the  place  of  the  older  ornaments,  and  decoratiun 
became  more  and  more  symbolic ;  the  early  appearance  and 
development  of  the  seal-ring  is  a  most  interesting  case  in  point. 
Woman  is  more  given  to  ornament  and  decoration  to-day  than 
man,  and  the  reason  is  that  she  has  not  yet  emerged  from  age- 
long servitude.  Her  abandonment  of  heavy  earrings,  anklets, 
rings,  belts  and  girdles,  ear-piercing,  foot-cramping,  waist-com- 
pressing, has  progressed  with  her  increased  freedom  and  liberty 
of  action.  Man,  also,  with  the  rise  of  social  equality,  has  lost 
his  heavy  clothing,  his  ungainly  head-dress,  his  clumsy  boots; 
the  soldier  is  no  longer  the  museum  of  his  wars,  the  nobleman 
no  more  the  resume  of  his  tyranny,  the  priest  no  longer  the 
epitome  of  his  theology — after  six  o'clock  they  are  all  equalised 
in  the  conventional  'dress  suit.'  It  is  a  social  rather  than  an 
sesthetic  factor  which  has  been  most  powerful  in  influencing 
to  this  end,  says  M.  MongeoUe,  and  the  law  of  the  diminution 
of  ornament  meets  us  everywhere  in  the  world  where  man  has 
made  progress  at  all.  A  most  interesting  parallel  is  made  by 
the  author  between  man's  abandonment  of  profuse  decoration 
and  his  treatment  of  the  products  of  his  artistic  genius:  'The 
idols  left  us  by  the  least  civilised  peoples  of  antiquity  are 
speckled  from  top  to  bottom,  covered  with  the  loudest  colour-', 
profusely  laden  with  crown?,  necklaces,  bits  of  all  sorts.  In 
proportion  as  art  progresses,  the  tone  of  the  paintings  softens, 
the  polychroming  is  effaced,  and  the  material  chosen  by  pre- 
ference, white  marble,  is  precisely  that  which  takes  on  the  most 
uniform  tint — lastly,  all  the  ornaments  disappear.  The  Venus 
of  Milo,  the  Venus  Aphrodite,  Diana  hunting,  and  all  the  fine 
statues  which  adorn  museums  of  antiquities,  have  on  them  no 
bracelets,  rings,  or  jewels  of  any  sort.  The  artist,  in  advance 
of  his  century,  foreseeing,  but  without  knowing  its  cause,  this 
evolution  of  ornament,  had  divined  the  fact  that  the  most 
beautiful  ornament  of  woman  is  her  own  beauty'  (432,  p.  97). 
As  Mr  Bates  points  out,  one  very  great  factor  in  emancipating 
man  from  the  hard  and-fast  rule  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest 
was  the  development  of  the  culinary  art,  since  it  '  reconciled 
the  otherwise  impossible  co-existence  of  great  assimilation  wiiii 
moderate  assimilative  organs  and  a  free  and  active  brain.' 
This  early  aesthetics  of  the  stomach,  if  such  it  may  be  called, 
left  the  way  open,  among  very  primitive  peoples,  for  the  appear- 
ance of  an  aesthetics  of  the  mind,  and,  a  little  later,  a  large 
development  of  the  useful  arts :  '  I  mention  the  aesthetic  arts 


THE   ARTS   OF   CHILDHOOD  1 8/ 

first,'  says  Mr  Bates  again,  '  for  in  all,  except  the  arts  of  veriest 
necessity,  they  uniformly  precede  the  industrial  arts  in  the 
order  of  development.  The  coloured  boy  who  "could  do 
without  shoes  well  enough,  but  was  suffering  for  a  breast-pin," 
was  a  rude  but  true  type  of  the  evolution  of  his  race'  (41, 
P-  143)- 

That  many  primitive  peoples  have  a  decided  sense  for  the 
beauty  and  perfume  of  flowers,  plants,  and  leaves  is  certain, 
and  their  poetry  often  abounds  in  picturesque  and  graceful 
metaphors  and  figures  drawn  from  observation  of  plant  life  and 
development.  The  use  of  flowers  and  leaves  for  personal 
adornment  is  also  common  with  several  of  the  lower  races, 
those  of  the  Pacific  Islands  especially. 

Dr  Guppy  writes  of  the  natives  of  the  Solomon  Islands,  a 
people  credited  often  with  great  cruelty  and  cannibalistic 
practices  (258,  p.  134):  'The  men  of  the  Solomon  Islands 
are  very  fond  of  placing  in  their  hair  a  brightly-coloured  flower, 
such  as  that  of  Hibiscus  tiliaceus,  or  a  pretty  sprig  or  the  frond 
of  a  fern.  My  native  companions  in  my  excursions  rarely 
passed  a  pretty  flower  without  plucking  it  and  placing  it  in 
their  bushy  hair;  and  they  were  fond  of  decorating  my  helmet 
in  a  similar  fashion.  Sometimes  one  individual  would  adorn 
himself  to  such  an  extent  with  flowers,  ferns  and  scented 
leaves,  that  a  botanist  might  have  made  an  instructive  capture 
in  seizing  his  person.  In  addition  to  the  flowers  placed  in  his 
bushy  mass  of  blackish-brown  hair,  he  would  tuck  under  his 
necklace  and  armlets  sprigs  and  leaflets  of  numerous  scented 
plants,  such  as  Evodia  hortensis  and  Ocy??ii(m  sancfiwi.  He 
would  take  much  pleasure  in  pointing  out  to  me  the  plants 
whose  scented  leaves  are  employed  in  the  native  perfumery, 
most  of  which  are  of  the  labiate  order,  and  are  to  be  com- 
monly found  in  the  waste  ground  of  the  plantations.  The 
women  seldom  decorate  themselves  in  this  manner.  Those 
of  Bougainville  Straits  make  their  scanty  aprons  of  the  leaves 
of  a  scitamineous  plant  named  "  bassa,"  which,  when  crushed 
in  the  fingers,  have  a  pleasant  scent.' 

Several  of  the  American  Indian  tribes  have  shown  them- 
selves very  fond  of  flowers.  Tusayan  maidens,  according  to 
Dr  J.  W.  Fewkes,  deck  their  hair,  on  holiday  occasions,  with 
Castilleia  affinis  Zivid  the  flowers  of  CEnothera  pimiatifida,  while 
a  legend  of  the  same  people  runs  :  '  Soon  after  people  came 
up  from  the  underworld,  and  were  yet  wandering  in  search  of 


l88  THE  CHILD 

permanent  dwellings,  some  women  daily  {)lu(:ked  the  flowers 
of  this  plant  {Sisynibriion  canescens],  flutterintj;  their  yellow 
blossoms  in  the  faces  of  the  infants  cradled  on  their  backs  to 
still  their  cries.' 

Mr  Walter  Hough  informs  us  further  as  to  the  use  of  the 
flowers  of  Pentestcmon  ambigiius,  Verbesina  enseloides,  and 
Castilleia  linariaefolia.  The  flower  of  the  Verbesina  is  '  worn 
by  children  in  the  hair  on  the  forehead,'  and  concerning  the 
Castilleia  we  learn:  'The  flowers  are  worn  for  adornment  by 
the  girls.  The  name  [wupa  mansi]  means  "  the  great  girl 
flower."  It  is  one  of  the  very  few  attractive  and  beautiful 
flowers  of  this  region,  and  may  appropriately  be  called  the 
Hopi  national  flower.'  The  Abronia  fragra/is  is  '  placed  on 
a  child's  head  to  induce  sleep'  {Amer.  Antlir.,  1896,  p.  43). 

The  Kootenay  Indians  of  South-eastern  British  Columbia 
call  the  Arenaria  piifigens  (sand-wort),  K'sdlcnokaydk, '  beautiful 
flower,'  admiring  its  flowers  very  much.  For  their  scent  they 
esteem  highly  several  plants,— 6>r>'s<?/.y/j  asperifoliens,  Matri- 
caria discoidea,  Artemisia  discolor,  etc.,  and  the  writer  has  seen 
Indians  'applying  the  latter  to  their  nostrils,  or,  where  it  is 
found  in  great  abundance,  rolling  about  on  the  ground  in 
evident  delight.'  They  sniffed  at  the  flowers  in  great  delight, 
as  children  and  women  often  do,  or  as  maidens  do  at  the 
bunch  of  violets  given  them  by  their  sweethearts. 

ALsthetic  Emotion  in  Children. — Perez's  opinion  that  chil- 
dren '  are  very  little  susceptible  of  real  sesthetic  emotion,'  is 
cited  with  approval  by  Miss  Lombroso,  who  remarks  (369, 
p.  163):  'Certain  spectacles  in  nature,  certain  works  of  art, 
strike  them,  but  not  deeply,  and,  indeed,  only  for  those  things, 
which  attach  themselves  to  their  immediate  experience.  In 
the  collection  of  Buisson,  e.g.,  containing  more  than  200  de- 
scriptive and  imaginative  themes  of  children  from  six  to  twelve 
years  of  age,  one  meets  but  few  phrases  that  betray  a  sense  of 
the  picturesque,  a  certain  sensibility  for  beautiful  things.'  As 
compared  with  American  school-children,  Italian  and  French 
children  seem  to  have  a  higher  sense  of  the  picturesque, 
though  all  of  them  too  often  exhibit  a  geometric,  commercial, 
anatomical,  inventory  sort  of  style  and  treatment,  all  full  of 
arid,  loose  imagination,  waked  up  here  and  there  by  an  occa- 
sional striking  word  or  genial  turn  of  speech  ;  or,  as  sometimes 
happens,  since  naming  a  thing  is,  for  the  child,  to  see  it,  to 
possess  it,  he  '  makes  a  rapid  inventory  of  all  sorts  of  things, 


THE  ARTS  OF   CHILDHOOD 


189 


just  as  in  his  play  (the  pleasure  is  analogous)  he  makes  of  a 
little  heap  of  sand,  castles,  fortresses,  etc'  (p.  153). 

The  judgment  of  the  young  as  to  the  impression  produced 
by  the  human  face  has  been  made  the  subject  of  experimental 
investigation  by  Professor  Paolo  Mantegazza,  who  exhibited 
to  his  class  at  the  Institute  in  Florence  '  a  good  photograph ' 
of  a  man  or  a  woman,  requesting  them  to  express  their  views 
as  to  the  aesthetic,  moral  and  intellectual  appearance  of  the 
physiognomy.  The  chief  results  are  embodied  below  (399, 
p.  262) : — 


I.MI'KESSION. 

^Esthetic. 

Moral. 

I.NTELLECTU.^L. 

0 

^ 

Nationality. 

3 

•3 

"mi 

■d 
0 
0 
0 

0 

-3 

u 

■0 

'•5 
1 

X 

§'5. 

Zi2 

Akka      (Miani,     Africa), 

'pygmy'     . 

6 

2 

S 

.■) 

.3 

,S 

8 

2 

I 

Australian 

2 

I 

P 

S 

7 

2 

I 

9 

Bali  (Sunda  Islands)  little 

girl      .... 

... 

8 

,1 

8 

2 

I 

3 

S 

3 

II 

Coromandel  (India)  man  . 

4 

1 

^ 

,1 

I 

6 

S 

4 

I 

10 

Japanese  little  girl  . 

7 

2 

8 

I 

3 

S 

I 

9 

Negro  (Zanzibar)     . 

... 

9 

I 

8 

2 

7 

9 

Roman,  pretty  young  girl 

9 

I 

7 

2 

I 

7 

2 

I 

10 

Roman  peasant 

4 

5 

3 

I 

I 

10 

8 

2 

2 

12 

Siamese  woman 

' 

II 

2 

10 

4 

I 

5 

7 

3 

15 

It  will  be  seen  that  'in  judging  strong  expressions  every- 
one agrees,  while  divergencies  are  very  great  when  uncertain 
expressions  are  in  question.'  Mantegazza  points  out  that  face- 
study  is  one  of  the  earliest  arts,  indeed  ^/le  earliest  art  of 
childhood ;  it  may  be  said  that  the  face  of  its  elders  is 
the  child's  chart  and  compass  in  the  first  voyages  of  life. 
No  wonder,  then,  that  children's  judgments  of  strange  physiog- 
nomies, like  those  made  by  women,  are  so  strangely  confident 
and  so  often  just.  With  children,  as  in  savage  art,  the  eye 
often  is  all,  and  for  them  the  '  evil  eye  '  is  more  of  a  fact  than 
in  the  prejudiced  mind  of  the  adult  parent  or  nurse. 


190 


THE   CHILD 


ChildretCs  Drawi/igs. — One  of  the  earliest  notices  of 
children's  drawings  is  to  be  met  with  in  Boccaccio.  In  the 
Decameron,  Novel  VI.,  Day  VI.,  Scalza  seeks  to  prove  that  the 
Baronici  are  the  oldest  family  in  the  world,  being  the  ugliest, 
by  the  following  argument :  '  You  must  understand,  therefore, 

that  they  were  formed  when 
Nature  was  in  her  infancy, 
and  before  she  was  perfect 
at  her  work ;  among  them 
you  will  see  one  with  a  long, 
narrow  face,  another  with  a 
prodigious  broad  one  ;  one 
that  is  flat-nosed,  another 
with  a  nose  half  an  ell  long  ; 
this  has  a  long  hooked  chin, 
that  one  eye  bigger  and  set 
lower  down  than  the  other. 
In  a  word,  their  faces  re- 
semble, for  all  the  world, 
what  children  make  when 
they  first  learn  to  draw.'  It 
is  quite  appropriate,  there- 
fore, that  an  Italian,  Corrado 
Ricci,  should  give  us,  in  his 
study  of  the  art  of  httle 
children,  one  of  the  first  and 
best  studies  of  the  art  pro- 
ducts of  the  child-mind. 
Ricci's  investigation,  sug- 
gested by  a  chance  obser- 
vation of  the  verse  and 
drawings  (sometimes  ob- 
scene and  naturalistic)  which 
young  hands  had  inscribed 
upon  the  walls  of  a  portico 
in  Bologna,  deals  with  some  1250  drawings,  paintings,  carvings, 
etc.,  of  boys  and  girls  of  the  elementary  schools  belonging  to 
all  conditions  of  life.  Some  100  drawings  were  obtained  (in 
the  course  of  five  months)  from  the  little  daughter  of  one  of 
his  friends,  about  250  came  from  the  schools  of  Modena,  the 
examples  of  plastic  art  were  the  result  of  the  labours  of  some 
twenty  children. 


DRAWING   OF   MAN   BY   SIX-YEAR- 
OLU   CHILD. 


THE   ARTS   OF   CHILDHOOD 


191 


Developmetit  of  Child- Art. ~T\i^  chief  points  with  regard  to 
the  art  of  httle  children  which  Ricci  notes  are  :  i.  They  begin 
with  man,  the  human  form  (head  and  legs,  the  rest  has  ^et 
to  come,  and  comes  gradually,  often  not  till  the  seventh  or 
eighth  year).     2.  The  peculiarities,  errors  and  idiosyncrasies  of 

the  drawings  of  little 
children  are  due  to  the 
fact  that  they  are  de- 
scribing the  man  and 
not  striving  to  repro- 
duce him  artistically — 
that  '  they  are  making 
with  signs  the  very 
description  they  would 
make  with  words.' 
They  know,  e.g.,  that 
a  man  is  always  a 
biped,  and  they  show 
his  two  legs,  whether 
he  is  walking,  standing, 
on  horseback  or  in  a 
boat.  Even  when  he 
is  hidden  in  part  he  is 
still  the  man  as  they 
see,  know,  speak  of 
him,  his  two  legs, 
arms,  eyes,  ears  belong 
to  him  everywhere, 
and  in  profile-draw- 
ings, which  come  after 
full-face  pictures,  he 
preserves  quite  often 
his  two  eyes,  or  ac- 
quires an  extra  nose 
at  one  side  of  the  face 
resulting  from  confusion  of  the  profile  and  the  full-face  draw- 
ings. 3.  In  the  child's  first  attempts  at  plastic  arts  the 
defects  noticeable  are— and  here  the  art  of  the  child  gets 
close  to  that  of  savages — defects  of  technique;  the  hand 
unskilled  to  draw  is  even  more  unskilled  to  model.  The 
drawings  of  primitive  peoples  are  often  much  superior  to 
those   of  children,   but  their   modelings  and   sculptures   are 


DRAWING   OF  WOMAN   BY   SIX-YEAR- 
OLD   CHILD. 


192  THE   CHILD 

often  no  better  at  all.  With  the  art  of  the  great  mediaeval 
decadence  the  points  of  contact  are  fewer,  for  the  latter  is 
rather  defective  than  infantile,  and  the  execution  of  the  worst 
products  of  that  age  is  generally  better  than  that  of  the  art  of 
children  and  of  savages.  One  thing,  however,  characterises 
them  all  in  common,  lack  of  proportion — birds  as  big  as  oxen 
on  trees  ;  men  larger  than  the  houses ;  horses  half  the  size  of  the 
men  upon  them,  etc.  The  children  also  have  a  less  pronounced 
sense  of  perpendicularity.  4.  The  child  mind  soon  comes 
to  be  more  impressed  by  detail  and  minuteness  than  by  the 
sublime — the  pipe  and  the  plug  hat  come  to  be  almost  the  idea 
of  the  man.  5.  The  beautiful  that  children  admire  is  not 
modified  by  so  many  considerations  as  is  that  worshipped  by 
adults — it  is  simple,  primitive,  virgin.  6.  The  drawings  of 
children  show  the  influence  of  special  facts  or  events  in 
marked  fashion.  If  children  have  seen  a  horse  fall  in  the 
street,  and  are  asked  that  day  to  draw  a  horse,  80  per  cent,  of 
them  will  draw  the  animal  falling;  the  drawings  made  on  a 
snowy  day  are  apt  to  be  dotted  all  over  with  marks,  etc. 

Ricci's  general  conclusion  is  that  'art  as  art  is  unknown  to 
children,'  and  memory  plays  an  important  nV^.-  'I  have, 
in  fact,  proved  in  the  case  of  children  from  many  schools  that, 
with  one  or  two  exceptions,  those  who  made  the  best  drawings 
were  the  best  scholars,  those  who  observe  and  remember  most 
accurately,  and  are  able  to  make  a  better  inventory  of  the  things 
learned  by  them  when  they  have  learned  their  lesson.  Later, 
on  the  other  hand,  he  may  turn  out  to  be  a  good  and  original 
artist  who  cut  the  poorest  figure  in  the  whole  school'  (538,  p. 
79),  Sully  repeats  Ricci's  statement  that  children  in  art  begin 
where  God  left  off,  with  man,  and  other  more  recent  investi- 
gators have  emphasised  the  child's  early  love  for  the  human 
form  as  a  subject  of  his  art. 

Children's  Drmvings  and  those  of  Primitive  Peoples. — Pro 
fessor  Elmer  E.  Brown,  summing  up  the  results  of  the  study 
of  the  drawings  of  four  Californian  children,  concerning  which 
interesting  details  are  given,  concludes:  i.  The  first  drawing 
was  rather  pictorial  than  decorative  in  character,  the  develop- 
ment of  symmetric  forms  merely  for  the  sake  of  beauty  being 
of  late  occurrence  and  due  to  the  influence  of  older  persons.  2. 
The  child's  first  chief  interest  is  rather  in  the  act  of  drawing 
than  the  product.  3.  The  drawing  is  only  in  a  very  limited 
degree  the  embodiment  of  the  child's  concept  of  the  thing 


THE   ARTS   OF   CHILDHOOD  I93 

represented,  since  he  lacks  both  the  power  of  muscular  co- 
ordination and   the  mastery  of  technique  which  such  inter- 
pretation presupposes.     4.  The  seemingly  symbolic  is  hardly 
more  than  a  mere  simplifying  of  figures  to  avoid  the  difficulty 
of  naturalistic  representation.     5.  There  is  comparatively  little 
marked    conventionalisation.       6.    The   alternation    between 
detail  and  general  outline   is   noticeable.     7.  There  is  little 
evidence  of  strong  preference  for  colour.     In  the  case  of  all 
these  children  (the  oldest  was  but  five  at  the  time  the  last 
record  was  taken),  Professor  Brown  remarks  the  distinct  in- 
fluence of  their  civilised  environment,  a  factor  which  certainly 
causes  their  art-products  to  be  unlike  in  some  respects  those 
of  primitive   peoples.      A   careful    examination    of    a    large 
collection   of  drawings    by   the   little   daughter   of  Professor 
Myron   T.   Scudder,  which  the   latter   kindly  placed   at   the 
disposal  of  the  present  writer,  emphasises  this  cause  of  differ- 
ence, the  importance  of  which  appears  even  more  clearly  from 
the  inspection  of  undoubted  specimens  of  American  aboriginal 
art.      From  the  imitation    of  his   civilised   environment   the 
modern  child  evolves  art-products  that  are  sometimes  as  far 
removed  from  those  of  the  lower  races  as  are  ideas  or  ideals. 
Dr  Ernst  Grosse,  who  has  discussed  with  great  critical  acumen 
the  beginnings  of  art,  writes  of  the  comparisons  usually  in- 
stituted between  the  art  of  savages  and  the  art  of  childhood  as 
follows  (254,  p.  185) :  'It  is  just  in  this  combination  of  truth 
to   life   and    rudeness   in   representation    that    the    essential 
peculiarity  of  primitive  sculpture  lies.     It  is,  therefore,  more 
surprising  than  pertinent  to  place  the  drawings  of  primitive 
peoples  on  the  same  stage  with  those  of  children.     For  of  the 
keen  observation  gift,  which  appears  unmistakably  in  all  the 
drawings  of  hunter-races,  with  the  best  intentions  in  the  world 
one   can    discover   no   trace   in    the    unaided    scribblings   of 
children.     The  works  of  art  with  which  our  children  decorate 
table  and  walls  are  far  rather  symbolical  than  naturalistic.     The 
only  real  resemblance  between  the  art  of  children  and  the  art 
of  primitive   peoples   lies   in   the   fact   that  the  latter  know 
almost  as  little  of  perspective  as  the  former.     Like  the  drawings 
of  children,  the  drawings  of  primitive  peoples  are  often  taken 
for  caricatures,  and  in  the  one  case  this  idea  is  as  inexact  as  in 
the  other.     If  a  child  or  an  Australian  in  a  drawing  dispro- 
portionately  sets    off  any  part  of  the  body  or  the  dress,  it 
signifies — provided,   of  course,  that  is  done  intentionally  and 


194 


THE   CHILD 


not  out  of  mere  awkwardness— simply  that  that  particular  part, 
for  some  reason  or  other,  has  seemed  specially  noteworthy  to 
the  artist.  Children  and  savages  really  have  a  strong  penchant 
for  satire,  and  it  may  therefore  safely  be  assumed  that  cari- 
catures will  be  found  among  the  products  of  primitive  art. 
But  it  is  not  easy  to  detect  them,  and  consequently  it  is  well 
to  declare  caricatures  only  those  primitive  drawings  whose 
satirical  intention  is  expressly  attested.' 

Observation. — A  careful  study  of  some  300  drawings  of  the 
Kootenay  Indians  of  British  Columbia,  obtained  by  the 
present  writer  during  the  summer  of  1891,  corroborates  the 


DRAWING   OF   SUNSET   BY   KOOTENAY   INDIAN. 


view  of  Dr  Grosse  as  to  the  influence  of  their  strong  observa- 
tion-gift upon  the  drawings  of  primitive  peoples.  Life  and 
action,  unmistakably  represented  and  consciously  recognised, 
are  there.  Characteristic  attitudes  are  reproduced,  environ- 
ment often  suggested,  and  a  fidelity  to  nature  constantly 
recurs  of  which  children  so  often  know  little  or  nothing.  The 
figures  in  primitive  art  live,  move,  and  have  their  being. 
Froebel  said  very  justly  (225,  p.  171):  '  Give  the  child  a  bit 
of  chalk  or  the  like,  and  soon  a  new  creation  will  stand  before 
him  and  you,'  but  the  new  world  thus  called  into  existence 
will  differ  in  some  marked  respects  from  the  world  of  savage 


THE   ARTS   OF   CHILDHOOD  I95 

art.  It  is  very  doubtful  if  any  of  the  truly  primitive  races  of 
men  are  quite  as  clumsy  in  their  art-expression  as  many 
children,  or  produce  so  often  such  'wooden'  effects. 

As  interesting  examples  of  the  art-development  of  different 
peoples  we  may  take  the  paintings  of  the  Mojos  Indians  of 
Bolivia,  and  the  sculpture  of  the  ancient  Peruvians.  Of  the 
former  Herndon  ^  says:  'The  Mojos  Indians  have  a  natural 
fondness  for  painting  the  human  figures  and  representing  birds 
and  animals,  particularly  the  common  chicken  and  the 
cow '  [both  introduced  by  the  whites].  '  The  latter  seems  to 
have  made  a  deep  impression  upon  them  at  first  sight ;  they 


r^"^. 


DRAWING   OF  COYOTE   OR    PRAIRIE   WOLF   BY   KOOTENAY 
INDIAN. 

often  paint  the  cow  fighting  or  chasing  a  man.  These  Indians 
describe  the  novel  sights.  I  have  not  seen  a  single  painting 
of  an  Indian  or  an  animal  which  originally  belonged  on  this 
pampa.  The  white  man,  the  cow  and  the  chicken  cock  are 
their  favourite  studies.  On  the  white  walls  of  their  houses,  inside 
and  out,  such  figures  appear  as  a  decoration.  In  the  rooms  of 
the  government  houses  the  best  artist  displayed  his  talent,  and 
those  drawings  on  the  walls  of  the  market-place  are  admired 
by  all  who  go  there.  So  much  taste  and  caution  have  the 
boys  and  little  children,  that  none  of  them  are  known  to  dis- 
figure any  of  these  paintings  in  the  public  market-place.  The 
^  Valley  of  Ainazo7i,  Vol.  II.,  1854,  p.  237. 

14 


196  THE  CHILD 

whole  country  is  a  dead  level ;  the  view  only  extends  to  the 
horizon,  the  sky  above,  and  one  continued  sheet  of  herd-grass 
below.  The  Klujos  Indian  makes  a  scene  for  himself,  and 
describes  it  with  coloured  paints.  On  a  windy  day  he  strikes 
light  and  puts  fire  to  the  dry  prairie-grass.  As  the  wind 
carries  the  I'nc  swiftly  along,  and  tlie  sheets  of  blaze  slioot  up, 
the  Indian  sketches  the  effect  produced  upon  the  cattle,  who 
toss  their  tails  into  the  air  and  rush  in  fear,  with  heads 
erect,  at  the  top  of  their  speed  in  an  opposite  direction  to  ttiat 
from  which  the  wind  comes.  He  decorates  the  inside  wall 
of  his  house  with  this  scene,  which  is  a  common  one  on  these 
prairie  lands.' 

Love  of  Life  and  Motion. — This  eager  desire  to  portray  life 
and  motion  has  been  noted  by  many  observers  of  children, 
and  DrLukens  cites  witli  approval  Hirth's  lament  that  children 
are  never  seen  taking  drawing  lessons  in  menageries.  The 
restraints  of  civilised  life  have  prevented  this  very  thing  which 
savage  peoples  can  and  do  do  —  sketching  from  the  livii  g, 
moving  object. 

Dr  Grosse  seeks  to  explain  the  remarkable  artistic  skill 
of  the  men  of  the  river-drift  in  France,  the  modern  Eskimo 
and  many  other  primitive  peoples,  past  and  present,  as  the 
natural  development  of  two  qualities,  which  in  the  early  history 
of  the  race  must  have  been  indispensable  in  the  struggle  for 
existence — a  gift  of  observation  and  manual  dexterity  ;  wherever 
everyone  has  to  be  a  good  huntsman  and  a  good  handicraftsman, 
he  may  also  be  a  tolerable  drawer  and  carver.  This  is  the 
'solution  of  the  riddle  of  the  reindeer  period.'  Everywhere, 
continues  Dr  Grosse,  we  see  the  contrast  between  hunter-folk 
and  agricultural  and  pastoral  peoples  revealing  itself  in  the 
rarity  among  the  latter  of  the  talent  for  life-like  and  nature-true 
drawing  and  carving,  and  cites  particularly  the  statement  of 
Fritsch  as  to  the  difference  between  the  'living  sketches  of 
the  Bushmen  and  the  stiff,  grotesque  animal  forms  which  the 
Bantu  models  and  carves  with  such  trouble'  (254,  p.  390). 
If  agricultural  and  pastoral  peoples  excel  hunter-folk  in  culture, 
they  stand  far  below  them  in  the  plastic  arts,  another  proof 
of  the  lack  of  correlation  between  art  and  civilisation.  The 
great  men  of  a  shepherd-folk  are  poets  rather  than  draughts- 
men, and  the  older,  wordless  art  is  often  truer  to  nature  and 
to  life. 

Grosse's  viewas  to  the  partnership  of  a  keen  observation-gift 


THE   ARTS   OF   CHILDHOOD  I97 

and  great  manual  dexterity  in  the  production  of  the  wonderfully 
accurate  and  skilful  drawings  and  carvings  of  primitive  man 
receives  support  from  the  examination  by  Miss  Louisa  McDer- 
mott  of  the  drawing-papers  of  720  Indian  children  (besides 
those  of  60  adults)  in  tlie  reservation-schools  of  the  United 
States,  from  which  it  appears  that:  'The  Indian  child  has 
more  native  talent  for  drawing  than  the  white  child;  he  has 
an  earlier  development  as  well.  This  is  shown  by  the  better 
control  of  the  finger  movements.'  Similarly  Miss  Marguerite 
Gallagher  notes  among  the  differences  observed  between  300 
papers  'the  spontaneous  drawings  of  the  children  of  the  Indian 
school  at  Pipestone  Agency,'  and  those  of  white  children  of 
like  age:  'Their  drawings  contain  more  life  and  action.  More 
stories  are  told  in  pictures  than  in  the  same  number  of  other 
drawings'  (385,  pp.  132,  134). 

^  Skeuomorphism.'' — In  the  history  of  primitive  art  the  fact 
repeatedly  comes  out  that  in  the  fabrication  of  new  things  the 
inventor's  chief  aim  was  to  preserve,  or  to  embellish,  the  old. 
Hence  many  of  the  new  art-products  are  simply  copies,  in 
other  material,  of  the  old,  the  structure  of  the  latter  determining 
the  form  and  the  ornamentation  of  the  new  manufacture.  Such 
transformations  and  transferences  Dr  H.  Colley  March  has 
styled  'skeuomorphs'  (from  the  Greek  word  ffxsi/oc,  'imple- 
ment,' !M(>f<p'h^  '  figure,  form '),  and  much  interesting  information 
concerning  their  origin  and  development  may  be  found  in 
Professor  Haddon's  Evolution  in  Art  (263,  p.  75),  F.  H. 
Cushing's  study  of  '  Pueblo  Pottery  as  illustrative  of  Zuiii 
Culture-growth,'  and  the  numerous  essays  of  Professor  W.  H. 
Holmes,  especially  his  Origin  and  Development  of  Form  and 
Ornament  in  Ceramic  Art.  Holmes  goes  so  far  as  to  say  : 
'  In  the  first  stages  of  art,  when  a  savage  makes  a  weapon,  he 
modifies  or  copies  a  weapon,  when  he  makes  a  vessel  he 
modifies  or  copies  a  vessel.' 

We  are  thus  enabled  to  account  for  the  great  antiquity  of 
certain  artistic  forms  and  fashions  of  ornament.  Pottery  goes 
back  to  clay-lined  wicker,  grass,  or  bark  vessels  and  gourds; 
the  ornamentation  of  the  bronze  celt  repeats  the  lashing  and 
binding  of  the  old  stone  axe ;  the  rock-tombs  of  Lycia  are 
'  models  in  stone  of  wooden  dwellings ' ;  the  gable  of  the  latter 
has  become  '  the  crowning  glory  of  Grecian  temples,'  the  tree 
corner-post,  the  beautiful  column  with  its  wonderful  capital 
(263,  p.  114).     A  glance  at  any  modern  building  or  into  any 


198  THE   CHILD 

furnished  apartment  will  reveal  scores  of  these  ancient  skeuo- 
morphs,  whose  existence  seems  evidence  of  the  essentially 
conservative  and  niisoneistic  nature  of  man,  particularly  in  the 
early  stages  of  artistic  development. 

The  art  of  childhood,  too,  is  largely  skeuomorphic,  in  the 
school,  at  least.  Dr  H.  T.  Lukens  remarks  very  appositely  : 
'  In  many  of  the  kindergarten  drawings  that  have  been  sent  in 
I  have  been  struck  with  the  angular  style  of  the  features,  as  if 
the  children  had  carried  over  to  their  free-hand  drawing  the 
wooden  effects  of  stick-laying,  drawing  on  square-ruled  paper,  and 
constructing  trees  and  umbrellas  out  of  squares  and  triangles.' 
Without  a  model  to  skeuomorphise  their  natural  bent,  however, 
children  are,  perhaps,  scribble-minded  and  naively  artistic  in 
the  highest  sense,  as  many  of  their  unaided  productions  show 
in  their  chief  elements.  Dr  Lukens's  complaint  that  'some 
drawing-teachers  think  it  the  acme  of  pedagogic  skill  to  make 
use  of  geometric  shapes,'  and  take  'all  life  and  action'  out  of 
children's  pictures  by  making  the  lines  straight,  belongs  with 
Professor  A.  Griinwedel's  protest  against  'the  attempted  "cor- 
rect" reproduction  of  aboriginal  ornament  according  to  the 
European  so-called  feeling  for  beauty,  whereby  somewhat 
crooked  lines  are  replaced  by  straight  ones,  and  unequal  halves, 
which  are  deemed  corresponding,  are  made  alike'  (263,  p.  335). 
Professor  Griinwedel  observes  further  :  '  The  Oranghutan  '  [tribe 
of  the  Malay  peninsula]  '  draws  a  curve  and  sees  it  as  a  straight 
line,  he  makes  too  many  legs,  too  few  fingers,  but  has,  in  spite 
of  these  faults,  according  to  our  conceptions,  the  power  of 
seizing  abbreviations  of  parts  of  the  body  in  a  picturesque 
manner,  of  skilfully  interpreting  contours,  and  of  preparing 
intelligent  ground-plans.  The  diagrammatic  copying  of  primi- 
tive ornamental  forms  can  therefore  have  no  scientific  value.' 
The  curved  lines  of  the  savage  and  the  child  belong  together, 
are,  in  fact,  the  primitive  line  of  beauty. 

The  preponderance  of  animal-pictures  in  the  art-work  of 
primitive  man  is  remarkable.  Says  Professor  Wilson  :  'There 
have  been  found  in  Western  Europe  about  400  specimens  of 
this  engraved  and  sculptured  work  belonging  to  the  Palaeolithic 
period.  Of  these,  four-fifths  are  representations  of  animals' 
(6S7,  p.  412).  In  this  period  indeed,  'nearly  every  animal 
belonging  to  that  epoch,  from  man  down,  has  been  graphically 
represented.'  In  the  following  Neolithic  period,  however, 
'  there  are  innumerable  specimens  of  decorative  art  as  applied 


THE   ARTS   OF   CHILDHOOD  I99 

to  industry,  while  we  are  wholly  without  graphic  delineations  of 
the  animals  of  the  period,  and  no  attempt  appears  to  have  been 
made  to  represent  any  living  thing,  or  to  make  a  representation 
of  nature  in  any  of  its  forms '  (42 1 ).  The  school  with  us  to-day 
seems  to  endeavour  to  hurry  the  child  into  a  '  neolithic  period  ' 
which  has  not  the  naturalness  or  the  spontaneity  of  that  of  the 
race. 

Cult  of  Line  and  Angle. — E.  Cooke,  criticising  the  drawing- 
instruction  in  the  schools  of  London,  cites  with  approval  the 
dictum  of  Ruskin  :  '  A  great  draughtsman  can,  so  far  as  I  have 
observed,  draw  every  line  but  a  straight  one,'  and  laments  the 
devotion  to  lines  and  angles  and  geometrical  -  ornamental 
models  shown  in  the  schools,  calling  for  the  introduction  of 
living  objects,  human  beings,  animals,  plants,  flowing  water, 
blazing  fire,  etc.,  and  other  beautiful  or  interesting  live  things 
of  nature.  When  the  child  longs  to  turn  out  men,  dogs,  cats, 
horses,  houses,  boats,  etc.,  he  is  shorn  of  his  freedom  and 
bidden  to  draw  a  straight  line,  a  cube  or  the  like.  When 
nature  intends  him  as  yet  to  be  a  player,  an  artist  only,  the 
school  seeks  to  make  of  him  a  geometrician ;  when  he  desires 
to  make  many  lines  he  is  confined  to  one,  when  he  endeavours 
to  produce  a  whole  it  seeks  to  make  him  produce  parts  only. 
Neither  the  child  nor  primitive  man  begins  with  a  geometric 
line — it  is  in  a  scribble  that  the  history  of  graphic  art  lies  hid.' 

Some  very  interesting  facts  are  contained  in  a  paper  by 
H.  G.  Fitz,  who  holds — and  his  statements  rest  upon  '21,600 
measurements  of  2700  individuals' — that  'the  average  school- 
training  has  carried  those  who  have  followed  it  no  nearer  suc- 
cess in  drawing  than  those  who  have  not  been  so  trained. 
Too  often  the  child  has  been  taught  technical  tricks  instead 
of  obser\'ing  facts — he  has  had  too  many  facilities  and  too  few 
facts.  Very  many  child-drawings  are  simply  '  line-making  with- 
out conscious  effort,'  and  never  get  beyond  caricature.  The 
accurate  seeing  of  the  child's  eye  is  under-estimated,  'volun- 
tary attention,  the  foundation  of  the  power  of  observation,'  is 
neglected,  too  much  precious  time  is  wasted  in  '  technical 
finish,'  and  it  is  forgotten  that  the  'drawing'  itself  is  of  no  con- 
sequence except  as  it  stands  for  the  record  (209). 

Resemblance  of  Art  of  Children  and  Savages. — How  narrow 
the  lines  sometimes  are  which  divide  the  art-products  of  the 
savage  from  those  of  the  child  and  again  from  those  of  the 
ignorant    peasant    is    shown    by    the    fact     that    the    Abbe 


200  THE  CHILD 

Domenech's  American  Indian  Pictographical  Manuscript  (i68), 
published  in  i860  as  an  example  of  Indian  pictography,  was 
shown  by  Julius  Petzholdt,  the  eminent  orientalist,  to  consist 
only  of  '  scribblings  and  incoherent  illustrations  of  a  local  Ger- 
man dialect.'  Dr  A.  S.  Gatschet,  describing  the  Vatican  MS. 
No.  3773,  a  pictorial  MS.  of  the  ancient  Aztecs  of  Mexico, 
says  ^ :  '  One  who  had  not  previously  seen  a  Mexican  manu- 
script would,  when  first  inspecting  this  volume,  naturally  be- 
lieve it  to  be  a  picture  book  for  small  children.  The  gaudy 
colours,  the  strange  acts  in  which  the  persons  figured  are 
engaged,  their  curious  accoutrements  bedecked  with  ornaments, 
the  grotesque  and  impossible  animals  assembled  on  almost 
every  page,  sometimes  serving  as  sacrificial  victims,  afford  a 
sight  "  fearful  and  wonderful  to  behold."  A  closer  comparative 
study,  however,  soon  reveals  the  fact  that  the  drawings  are 
of  a  symbolic  nature,  and  that  every  picture  has  a  meaning 
disclosable  by  profound  study  of  the  Nahua  people,  their 
customs  and  artistic  development.' 

No.  83  of  the  Worcester  child-observations  on  '  Imitation  ' 
(291,  p.  13)  reads:  'Jack,  age  two  years.  Jack  spit  on  his 
fingers,  and  rubbed  the  wall  of  the  house.  He  continued 
doing  so  for  three  or  four  minutes.  I  said,  "  What  is  Jack 
doing?"     He  answered,  "Jack  painting  house.'" 

This  recalls  the  fact  that  the  primitive  form  of  painting  was 
the  rubbing  into  the  skin  of  certain  parts  of  the  body  the  simple 
colour-substances  of  early  times.  '  To  paint '  and  '  to  rub  '  are 
synonymous  in  several  languages  of  the  lower  races  of  men,  e.g., 
Klamath :  taldka,  to  paint,  to  varnish,  means  to  rub  with 
palm. 

Art  and  Magic. — While  perhaps  the  great  majority  of  the 
carvings  of  the  primitive  cave-men  of  France  '  do  not  exceed 
in  point  of  execution  the  schoolboy's  sculptures  on  the  wall,' 
the  images  of  the  reindeer,  M.  Popoff  points  out,  are  of  a 
higher  order  of  excellence,  the  characteristic  lines  of  the 
animal  being  traced  with  remarkable  care.  Besides  these,  the 
figures  of  men  so  far  found  'are  puerile,  almost  caricatures, 
and  utterly  out  of  proportion.'  These  early  savages,  as 
Broca  remarked,  drew,  for  some  reason  or  other,  the  figures  of 
their  fellows  very  badly.  The  total  absence  of  designs  from 
the  plant  world  is  noteworthy  also.  From  consideration  of 
these  facts,  Popoff  puts  forward  the  theory  that  these  primitive 
^  Ainer.  Anthr.,  Jan.  1897. 


THE   ARTS   OF   CHILDHOOD  201 

artistic  products  '  were  not  intended  for  ornamentation  merely, 
nor  yet  as  imitation  pure  and  simple  of  nature,  but  as  an 
instrument  for  struggling  against  nature.'  In  other  words, 
when  the  cave-dweller  of  the  Dordogne  engraved  on  the  handle 
of  his  poignard  the  image  of  a  reindeer — the  most  important  of 
the  animal  world  to  him — it  was  not  by  way  of  ornamenting 
his  weapon,  but  because  he  thought  by  this  means  '  to  exercise 
some  magic  power  over  his  prey,'  a  view  not  so  very  far 
from  that  which  long  survived  in  witchcraft.  The  closer  the 
resemblance  of  his  carving  or  drawing  to  the  actual  form  of  the 
animal,  the  greater  was  his  chance  of  acting  upon  him,  and  we 
have  thus  a  very  early  and  powerful  reason  for  rapid  improve- 
ment in  art  of  the  kind  in  question.  Like  his  nearest  con- 
gener, the  modern  Eskimo,  the  ancient  cave-man  was  milder 
and  less  given  to  raising  his  hand  against  the  life  of  his  fellows 
than  we  are  wont  to  suppose  ;  he  warred  against  the  animals 
for  food,  clothing  and  implements,  not  against  the  men  for 
wives,  property  or  land.  Carving  and  the  related  arts 
(|)ainting  included)  owe  their  origin,  according  to  Popoff,  to 
primitive  man's  'attempt  to  reach  the  living  animal  through  its 
image,'  just  as  the  civilised  man  to-day  seeks  life  in  works 
of  art.  Magic,  then,  is  the  mother  of  painting  and  sculpture — 
a  thought  aptly  expressed  by  the  song  of  the  American  Indian 
medicine-man,  '  my  drawing  makes  of  me  a  god.' 

Some  Causes  of  Poverty  in  ^r/.— According  to  Mr  McGuire, 
who  has  sketched  the  'Development  of  Sculpture'  (387), 
small  carvings  of  bone,  of  ivory,  or  of  wood,  appear  to  be 
common  to  every  race,  and  were  probably  carried  on  the 
person.  'Sculpture,'  however,  'accompanies  a  settled  stage 
of  society.  On  the  other  hand,  carving  is  an  art  commonly 
found  among  the  most  savage  races.  The  development  of 
skill  in  carving  is  often  encountered  in  the  most  unexpected 
localities,  and  in  places  where  no  evidences  are  found  of  the 
sculpture  of  large  figures'  [the  size  of  statues  is  known  to 
increase  as  man  occupies  continuously  particular  sites  and  lives 
in  settlements].  This  difference  appears  directly  traceable  to 
the  mode  of  life  which  savagery  entails.  Wandering  during 
the  hunter  period  from  point  to  point  with  the  change  of 
seasons,  or  as  game  or  fruit  became  abundant  or  scarce,  Avith 
no  fixed  dwellings  and  with  no  ability  to  transport  heavy 
statues,  there  was  no  incentive  to  make  them.'  Mr  McGuire 
rejects  the  theory  that  sculpture  owes  its  origin  to  '  the  artificial 


202  THE  CHILD 

incision  of  lines  upon  rock  surfaces,'  holding  that  'a  few  blows 
given  to  a  stone,  shaped  by  any  of  the  processes  of  nature 
referred  to'  [conglomerates,  erosion  by  freezing  and  thawing, 
carving  by  wind-blown  sand,  silt-grinding,  water-washing,  etc.], 
*  would  develop  figures,  and  would,  it  is  believed,  soon  lead  to  a 
deliberate  and  intentional  shaping  of  stones.'  This  seems 
proved,  in  some  parts  of  the  world  at  least,  by  '  the  finding 
of  water-washed  peebles  resembling  animals  or  natural  imple- 
ments, often  associated  with  the  remains  of  the  earliest  periods 
of  human  existence,  especially  of  those  of  the  caves  and 
shelters  which  were  man's  first  dwelling-places.' 

Macaulay  is  not  far  from  the  truth  when,  in  his  essay 
on  Dryden,  he  says  :  *  The  first  works  of  the  imagination  are 
poor  and  rude,  not  from  the  want  of  genius,  but  from  the  want 
of  materials.  Phidias  could  have  done  nothing  with  an  old 
tree  and  a  fish-bone,  or  Homer  with  the  language  of  New 
Holland.'  This  point  has  been  almost  completely  ignored  by 
more  than  one  recent  writer  on  primitive  art  and  by  nearly  all 
those  who  have  treated  of  the  art  of  children.  The  stimulating 
and  interfering  role  of  material,  in  the  evolution  of  the  primitive 
shaping  arts  especially,  is  certainly  very  great,  while  its  re- 
tarding, or  even  retrogressive,  effect  is  often  by  no  means 
insignificant. 

Earth  Moulding. — Not  very  much  has  been  written  about 
earth-moulding  by  primitive  races,  but  it  seems  to  be  quite 
common.  Mr  R.  H.  Mathews  has  given  an  interesting  account 
of  the  ground  drawings  of  the  Australian  aborigines,  which  are 
of  four  kinds :  (i)  figures  outlined  by  laying  down  logs,  bark 
or  bushes  to  a  certain  height  and  then  covering  them  with 
earth ;  (2)  figures  formed  entirely  of  loose  earth  heaped  up  into 
the  required  shape  (sometimes  figures  outlined  in  bark  are 
placed  on  top  of  these) ;  (3)  figures,  devices,  patterns  cut  into 
the  surface  of  the  ground  (the  groove  being  two  or  three  inches 
wide  and  about  two  inches  deep)  with  tomahawks  or  flat  pieces 
of  wood  with  an  edge ;  (4)  figures  drawn  on  the  sand  with 
a  stick.  The  size  and  variety  of  all  these  drawings  is  very 
great,  and  some  of  them  '  display  the  inventive,  humorous,  and 
imitative  faculties  of  the  natives,'  especially  as  to  the  habits  and 
institutions  of  the  white  settlers.  A  point  of  contact  with  the 
drawings  of  children  lies  just  here,  in  the  tendency  to 
caricature.  Mr  Mathews  observes  that  '  earthen  figures  formed 
in  high  relief  or  engraven  upon  the  turf,  representing  human 


THE   ARTS   OF   CHILDHOOD  203 

beings,  different  animals,  and  the  curious  designs  called 
yammunyamiin  are  found  chiefly  at  those  places  where  the 
young  men  of  the  tribe  are  admitted  into  the  ranks  of 
manhood.'  Mr  J.  W.  Fawcett  is  quoted  as  saying  that  certain 
aborigines  of  the  Herbert  River  region  in  Queensland  amused 
themselves  by  drawing  with  sticks  on  the  beach  figures  of  men, 
birds,  lizards,  turtles,  canoes,  etc. ;  and  Mr  S.  Gason,  of 
Beltana,  South  Australia,  reports  that  '  the  aborigines,  old  and 
young,  amuse  themselves  by  portraying  various  objects  on  the 
sand  by  means  of  a  piece  of  stick.  These  drawings  consisted 
chiefly  of  kangaroos,  dogs,  snakes,  fish  and  emus,  and  other 
birds.' 

Another  procedure  suggestive  of  children's  '  drawings '  is 
described  by  Mr  C.  Winnecke  as  '  a  frequent  pastime  of  the 
natives,'  both  in  South  and  North  Australia  :  '  To  select  a  clay- 
pan  and  on  its  flat  surface  to  outline  circles,  squares,  and  other 
figures  by  means  of  small  stones  placed  in  a  single  row 
along  the  outlines  of  the  figures  to  be  delineated.  The  stones 
are  sometimes  carried  to  the  clay-pans  from  long  distances, 
none  being  obtainable  in  the  immediate  vicinity  '  (416). 

The  child  (sometimes  the  adult)  at  the  seaside,  or  in 
the  sand-lot,  offers  many  parallels  here,  and  how  far  the 
imagination  may  go  can  be  read  in  Dr  Hall's  interesting  '  Story 
of  a  Sand-Pile '  (272). 

Illustrated  Stories. — The  great  skill  shown  by  children  in 
illustrating,  out  of  their  own  heads,  stories  and  anecdotes 
told  them  by  teachers,  parents,  other  children,  etc.,  or  even 
stories  invented  by  themselves,  offers  a  point  of  comparison  with 
the  pictographs,  ivory  scratchings,  carvings  and  the  like  of 
primitive  races — Bushmen,  Eskimo,  cave-men — where  we  have, 
beyond  a  doubt,  a  similar  effort  of  our  remote  forefathers  to 
illustrate  a  story  and  enjoy  with  added  zest  the  reminiscence  of 
hunting  adventures,  conflicts,  etc.  In  the  collections  of  Hoff- 
man, Wilson,  Andree  we  have  doubtless  many  figures  of 
just  such  an  origin.  Had  we  all  the  product  of  these  primitive 
minds  we  would  probably  find  many  pendants  and  parallels  for 
the  thousands  of  illustrations  which  have  followed  in  the  wake 
of  the  American  experiments  with  the  stories  of  '  Struwwelpeter,' 
' Hans-guck-in-die-Luft,'  'Washington  and  the  Cherry-Tree,' 
etc.,  and  the  German  experiments  with  '  Little  Red  Riding 
Hood,'  'The  Two  Hares,'  etc.  Illustrative  art  begins  early  in 
the  individual  and  in  the  race.      This  is  particularly  true   of 


204  THE    CHILD 

a  hunting  and  fishing  people  like  the  Eskimo,  as  is  revealed  by 
the  figures  reproduced  in  Dr  Hoffman's  wonderfully  complete 
discussion  of  their  graphic  art.  The  figures  in  Wilson's 
'  Prehistoric  Art '  often  emphasise  the  same  point,  apparently. 
In  her  brief  comparison  of  Eskimo  drawings  (from  Alaska) 
with  those  of  civilised  children — the  Eskimo  drawings  are 
by  an  adult  and  some  children  under  14 — Mrs  Louise  jNIaitland 
(392,  p.  450)  notes  that  '  story-telling  or  record  predominates 
over  representative  work.'  The  Eskimo,  as  compared  with  the 
civilised  children,  exhibit  'much  greater  graphic  skill  in 
manipulation,'  while  'in  the  composition  or  arrangement  of 
their  drawings,  the  children  in  their  younger  years  show  a 
correspondence  with  the  Eskimo  ;  at  an  older  age  they  pass 
more  frequently  to  a  higher  artistic  development.'  Some  of 
the  similarities  observed  between  the  drawings  of  civilised 
children  and  Eskimo  Mrs  Maitland  attributes  to  what  Dr 
Brinton  calls  '  the  tendency  of  the  mind,  everywhere  and 
in  all  conditions,  to  act  in  the  same  manner.' 

Earliest  Human  Art. — The  drawings,  engravings  and 
sculptures  of  Palaeolithic  man  are,  according  to  Professor 
Wilson,  '  the  foundation  and  beginning  of  all  art,'  and  they 
'  show  the  natural  or  original  germ  of  art  in  the  human  mind 
uninfluenced  by  anything  beyond  the  necessary  environment  of 
life  and  the  inevitable  conditions  of  existence'  (687,  p.  418). 
The  impulse  which  led  early  man  to  the  production  of  these 
art-forms  was  '  his  love  of  beauty  and  his  desire  to  gratify  it ' 
— they  represent  primitive  aesthetics  :  '  They  had  no  occult 
meaning  ;  they  never  stood  for  any  great  divinity  or  power, 
whether  natural  or  supernatural ;  they  were  simply  lines  and 
dots  arranged  in  ornamental  form  to  gratify  man's  innate  sense 
of  beauty,  and  because  he  wished  the  things  he  possessed  to  be 
beauteous  in  his  eyes'  (687,  p.  419).  These  Palaeolithic 
motifs,  Professor  Wilson  tells  us,  were  repeated  again  and  again 
in  the  civilisation  of  the  Neolithic  and  Bronze  ages,  where 
we  see  'how  they  varied,  how  they  grew,  and  yet  how,  down  to 
the  end  of  the  pre-historic  and  the  beginning  of  the  historic 
period,  they  never  got  beyond  lines  or  dots,  which  combined 
made  the  parallel  lines,  the  chevron,  the  herring-bone,  the 
zig  zag,  and  similar  simple  geometric  designs.'  The  art  of 
the  Neolithic  epoch  was  essentially  decorative  then  as  con- 
trasted with  the  animal-forms  of  the  Palaeolithic  period,  and  the 
geometric  ornaments  '  were  principally  employed  in  p'astic  art, 


THE  ARTS   OF   CHILDHOOD  205 

and  usually  for  the  decoration  of  pottery.'  The  author  further 
holds  (6S7,  p.  419)  that,  '  while  there  have  been  inventions  and 
duplicate  inventions  of  new  designs  and  reinventions  of  for- 
gotten ones  ...  as  a  rule  the  perpetuation  of  ornamental 
designs  was  by  imitation  and  teaching,  passing  from  generation 
to  generation,  from  parent  to  child,  and  from  master  to  servant 
or  slave.'  Professor  Wilson  seems  to  sympathise  but  little  with 
the  doctrine  of  the  parallelism  of  degree  of  development  and 
thought  and  action,  or  with  the  theory  of  the  uniformity  of  the 
human  mind  everywhere. 

The  absence  of  symbolism  in  the  earliest  known  art  of  the 
human  race  is  thus  commented  upon  by  the  same  auth- 
ority in  his  account  of  Prehistoric  Art  (687,  p.  412): 
'  There  were '  [in  the  art  of  the  Paleolithic  period  in  Europe], 
'some  geometric  designs.  These  were  bylines  or  dots,  and, 
curiously  enough,  never  or  rarely  in  the  form  of  a  cross, 
triangle,  square  or  circle,  concentric  or  otherwise.  They  con- 
sisted of  parallel  lines,  sometimes  crossed,  sometimes  drawn  in 
different  directions,  zig  zags,  chevrons,  and  sometimes  the 
double  chevron,  giving  it  the  appearance  of  the  letter  X.  On 
some  of  the  long  straight  instruments  of  bone  appear  undulating 
wavy  lines,  and  in  a  few  cases  are  round,  slightly  pointed 
projections — protuberances  like  a  mamelon. 

'  In  all  these  combinations  of  figures  none  have  been  found 
which  seem  to  have  any  meaning  or  to  have  the  form  of  any 
letter-word  or  hieroglyphic.  They  do  not  correspond  to  any 
sign,  ideographic  or  hieroglyphic.  The  cross  is  not  found ; 
there  is  no  representation  of  sun-worship,  nor  of  the  sea,  nor 
of  any  divinity,  good  or  bad.  Apparently  there  had  been  no 
thought  other  than  that  apparent  upon  the  face  of  the  picture. 
For  instance,  when  horses  are  represented  following  each 
other,  we  can  understand  that  there  is  a  drove.  When  the 
mammoth  is  represented,  we  understand  that  the  artist  has 
seen  the  animal.  When  a  man  is  represented  following  the 
bison,  and  in  the  act  of  throwing  his  spear,  we  can  understand 
that  a  hunting  scene  is  meant.  Beyond  these  and  similar 
views,  no  ideas  seem  to  have  been  attempted.  But  we  are  to 
remember  the  paucity  of  the  sources  of  our  knowledge.' 

Professor  Wilson  believes  the  drawings,  engravings  and 
sculpture  of  Paleeolithic  man  '  were  drawings  made  direct 
from  nature,  with  the  original  before  the  eye  of  the  artist,'  not 
copies  or  adaptations.     The  present  writer  has  noted   more 


206 


THE   CHILD 


than  once  the  tendency  of  the  American  Indian  to  draw  from 
life  rather  than  from  memory.  The  following  drawing  by  a 
girl  of  six  years  is  a  good  example  of  the  child's  tendency  to 
group  things  incongruously  and  to  picture  them  disproportion- 
ately, while,  at  the  same  time,  it  shows  how  early  the  sun- 
picture,  by  imitation  or  by  original  drawing,  occurs  with  the 
young  artist.  Figure  A  in  the  drawing  represents  'the  sun 
what  be's  up  in  the  good  morning,'  and  Figure  B  the  spaniel 


'^A. 


^'b/s.' 


DRAWING   BY   SIX-YEAR-OLD  GIRL. 
(Fig.  A.,  the  Sun  ;  Fig.  B,  a  Dog.) 


dog  of  a  friend.  The  child  (born  in  Worcester,  Mass.,  of 
Lithuanian  parents)  also  shows  distinct  evidence  of  having 
been  influenced  by  the  pictures,  rites  and  ceremonies  of  the 
Greek  Church,  and  with  her  the  cross  and  ring  have  already 
become  somewhat  symbolic. 

Three  very  interesting  examples  of  the  degeneration, 
degradation  and  alteration  of  symbols  are  given  by  Colonel 
Mallery  in  his  discussion  of  the  '  dangers  of  symbolic  interpreta- 


THE   ARTS   OF   CHILDHOOD  207 

tion.'  ^  The  chevron  on  the  sleeves  of  non-commissioned  officers 
(chosen,  when  the  modern  uniform  was  planned,  from  among 
the  various  heraldic  symbols,  because  it  was  easy  to  form  an 
obtuse  angle  with  two  strips  of  cloth),  goes  back  to  '  an 
honourable  ordinary  in  heraldry,  representing  two  rafters  of  a 
house  united  at  the  top,  originally  bestowed  on  the  founder  of 
a  house  or  family  thereafter  entitled  to  bear  arms.'  The 
initial  Ij^  of  medical  prescriptions  ('  vulgarly  called  an 
abbreviation  of  the  word  "  Recipe "  ')  once  '  portrayed  the 
extended  wings  of  Jove's  eagle,  and  was  used  as  a  prayer  to 
the  king  of  gods  for  his  aid  to  the  action  of  the  remedy.' 
The  barber's  pole  of  certain  patriotic  American  '  tonsorial 
artists,'  who  '  added  blue  to  the  red  and  white,  so  as  to  include 
all  the  national  colours,' — an  idea  which  the  negroes,  who  have 
taken  up  so  readily  the  profession,  '  have  advanced  another 
step,  so  that  their  newest  poles  '  [the  paper  was  written  in  1881] 
'show  the  blue  in  a  union,  with  the  proper  arrangement  of 
stars,  and  the  red  and  white  stripes  extending  straight  instead 
of  spirally, — becomes  nothing  more  nor  less  than  a  wooden 
United  States  flag  of  clumsy  shape.' 

Atavism  in  symbols  characterises  the  criminal — pathology 
in  symbols  the  lunatic.  As  Ferrero  remarks,  '  there  is  always 
a  correspondence  between  the  intellectual  condition  and  the 
system  of  symbols  employed  to  express  the  ideas ;  in  the 
criminal  a  primitive  sign-system  corresponds  to  a  mental 
state,  in  part  primitive  and  rude ;  in  the  lunatic  a  system  of 
delirious  symbols  corresponds  to  a  delirious  state  of  ideas.' 
Unlike  criminals,  '  madmen  seldom  employ  the  ordinary  signs 
or  writing,  or  content  themselves  with  pictography,'  but  they 
'  invent  special  signs,  mixing  them  up  with  figures,  words, 
letters  of  the  alphabet,  and  creating  a  bizarre  writing  very 
difficult  to  comprehend,  and  in  itself  evidence  enough  of  the 
disordered  condition  of  their  minds.'  With  the  lunatic,  also, 
the  symbol  does  not  escape  the  'reduction,'  to  which  are 
subject  all  his  sensations,  images,  feelings,  ideas.  These 
marks  of  the  madman  in  no  way  necessarily  characterise  the 
pictographs  or  the  tattooing  of  the  criminal  (199,  p.  190). 

General  Characteristics  of  Child  Art. — Pappenheim  (474, 
p.  62),  summarising  the  results  of  the  numerous  studies  of  the 
drawings  of  children,  indicates  thus  the  chief  points  observed  : 
^  T7-ans.  Anthr.  Soc,  Wash.,  I.  i.,  71-79. 


2o8  THE   CHILD 

I.  In  the  drawing  activity  of  the  little  child  artistic  intent 
is  absent,  the  'joy  of  making  and  doing'  (movement  of  the 
hand  and  production  of  lines)  is  alone  expressed.  2.  Limi- 
tation in  the  direction  of  the  technique  of  drawing  renders 
more  difficult  to  the  child  the  expression  of  his  ideas.  3. 
Mental  activity  prevents  the  child  from  continuously  fixing  his 
attention  upon  the  same  object  and  systematically  observing 
it ;  the  unlimited  fancy  of  the  child,  stirred  by  the  lines 
(perhaps  unsuccessful)  already  drawn,  wanders  away  alto- 
gether. 4.  The  child  is  ruled  by  one  strong  aim — to  make 
the  drawing  with  the  least  possible  number  of  expressive  lines. 
5.  The  child  uses  symbols  (schemata)  which  it  has  received 
from  other  children,  or  from  adults.  6.  Habit  causes  the 
child  often  to  use  the  same  symbols  for  related  objects.  7. 
The  distinctive  characteristics  of  the  object  to  be  drawn, 
which  the  child  has  in  his  head,  are  enumerated  by  him  in  a 
linear  description.  8.  In  drawing  the  child  is  guided  more  by 
his  knowledge  of  the  thing  as  a  whole — the  concept  of  its 
external  appearance  remains  in  the  background.  9.  By  a  too 
great  admixture  of  intelligence,  the  child's  sense-perceptions 
are,  for  artistic  purposes,  falsified.  10.  The  endeavour  to 
draw  by  imitation  an  object  or  a  model,  or  to  represent  some- 
thing beautiful,  causes  the  child  to  lose  his  pleasure  in 
'  malendes  Zeichnen.' 

The  various  factors  entering  into  the  drawing  phenomena 
of  childhood  differ  with  individuals  very  much,  while  environ- 
ment and  opportunity  cut  short  or  prolong  the  processes  under 
consideration.  Gdtze,  in  his  'Child  as  Artist,'  emphasises  the 
child's  love  of  his  '  maze  of  lines,'  his  animism^vvhat  is  for 
adults  a  'not  I  '  is  for  him  an  'I  too'  (247,  p.  7)— and  the 
naivete  with  which  he  shares  his  life,  thought,  actions  with 
everything  and  everybody,  and  the  value  of  drawing  as  the 
natural,  preparatory  stage  for  writing  (herein  the  child  repeats 
the  race). 

Stages  in  Bfawing. — In  Sully,  Barnes,  Cooke,  and  other 
writers  on  the  subject,  many  details  will  be  found  as  to  the 
various  periods,  stages  or  epochs  of  evolution  in  the  drawings 
of  the  child.  Dr  H.  T.  Lukens  (379,  p.  167),  however,  has 
given  perhaps  the  best  general  presentation  of  the  growth  and 
fluctuation  of  the  instinct  for  drawing  in  children.  He 
recognises  four  periods,  which,  with  the  chief  characteristics 
of  each,  may  be  described  as  follows : — 


THE   ARTS   OF   CHILDHOOD  209 

I.  First  Period,  up  to  about  four  or  five  years  of  age. 
Here  the  child  scribbles  only,  and  is  dominated  by  interest  in 
the  finished  product.  Practice  increases  the  pleasuie  felt  in 
drawing. 

II.  Second  Period,  from  about  the  fifth  to  the  tenth  year. 
Here  the  drawing  becomes  the  visual  foundation  for  the 
mental  picture,  and  the  child  uses  a  few  bold,  speaking  lines 
to  give  expression,  or  rather  to  intimate  it,  for  now  the  child 
sees  not  merely  the  scrawl  it  produces,  but  what  is  behind  it, 
the  picture  of  fancy,  which  is  only  hinted,  not  reproduced 
in  the  drawing.  This  period,  which  the  school  so  often 
succeeds  in  paralysing,  is  'the  golden  age  of  the  artistic 
development  of  the  child.'  This  is  the  creative  period /cr  se  ; 
here  the  child  is  likest  the  real  artistic  genius,  whose  product 
is  more  of  a  substitute  for,  than  a  strict  imitation  of,  nature. 
It  is  the  period  of  Lange's  'artistic  illusion.'  All  this  is 
destroyed  when  the  teacher  comes  to  say,  '  Open  your  eyes,  O 
child,  see  how  much  better  the  model  is  ;  draw,  paint  after  it  ! ' 
for  the  child  by  nature  is  qualified  to  picture  the  absent,  the 
imagined,  not  the  cool,  classic  present  set  before  him. 

III.  Third  Period,  from  about  the  tenth  to  about  the  fif- 
teenth year.  In  the  beginning  of  this  period  the  environment 
and  the  school  have  repressed  the  productive  activity  of  the 
child  in  the  endeavour  to  increase  his  intellectuality.  The 
child  now  '  begins  to  see  that  his  drawing  is  nothing  more 
than  a  poor,  weak  imitation  of  nature,'  and  the  charm  of  creative 
art  vanishes  with  the  disappearance  of  the  former  naive  faith. 
No  wonder  so  many  observers  have  noted  a  distinct  deteriora- 
tion both  in  the  pleasure  in,  and  the  quality  of,  the  drawings 
of  children,  beginning  with  the  tenth  or  twelfth  year — '  die 
Zauber  ist  hin.'  This  is  the  period  of  '  Barnes'  level,'  at 
which  most  men  remain  all  their  lives. 

IV.  Fourth  Period,  from  about  the  fifteenth  to  about  the 
twentieth  year.  For  some  fortunate  individuals,  favoured  by 
environment  or  other  stimulus,  adolescence  exhibits  a  recru- 
descence of  the  old  creative  power,  a  reinvigoration  of  the 
pristine  love  of  producing.  This  is  the  period  of  '  Miller's 
rise  '  in  the  curve  representing  the  progress  of  drawing  in  the 
child.  All  these  periods  are  further  marked  by  the  fact  that 
the  child,  when  working  as  a  child,  draws  from  memory  and 
imagination,  even  when  he  has  the  object  to  be  drawn  before 
him. 


210  THE   CHILD 

Within  the  four  periods  just  described,  there  can  be  dis- 
cerned transitional  periods,  viz.,  at  about  the  fourth  year, 
around  the  eighth  and  ninth  years,  and  about  the  fifteentli 
year. 

Draivhii;  in  Education. — In  the  course  of  liis  appeal  for  a 
reform  of  the  drawing-instruction  in  the  public  schools,  which 
shall  make  it  'the  school  of  sight,'  not  the  grave  of  talent  and 
naturalness  {as  Ilirth  has  called  it),  l)r  Albert  Ileim  (292)  of 
Zurich  observes  :  '  Many  a  fifteen-year  old  boy  and  many  an 
adult  can,  e.g.,  no  longer  draw  the  picture  of  a  bird,  which  at 
the  age  of  from  five  to  ten  years  he  was  able  to  make  before 
any  instruction  in  drawing.'  The  delight  in  drawing  which 
reigned  in  the  earlier  years  has  been  suppressed  under  the  weight 
of  method  and  direction,  the  child's  own  book,  filled  with  in- 
numerable naive  sketches  of  almost  every  object,  disappears 
before  the  sheet  with  the  correctly-drawn  ornament  or  geometri- 
cal figure  ;  life  no  longer  calls  to  him  to  represent  it,  the  deadest 
of  dead  things  are  fashioned  by  him  at  the  beck  of  others. 
The  beautiful  curves  he  has  seen  in  Nature  subside  before  the 
cube,  the  square  and  the  triangle,  with  their  uninspiring 
straight  lines.  For  ten  geniuses  of  the  nursery  in  drawing 
there  remains  hardly  one  in  the  high  school.  Ornament,  a 
comparatively  late  product  of  the  human  mind,  in  its  regu- 
larity and  rigidity,  its  conventionalism  and  lifelessness,  has 
been  allowed  to  extinguish  that  art  of  drawing  in  early  child- 
hood which  by  its  very  'play'  asserts  its  kinship  with  real 
genius.  The  net  result  is  a  few  clever  ornamentalists  and  a 
host  of  disgusted  children,  whom  different  treatment  would 
have  permitted  to  assert  more  of  their  inherent  love  for  and 
delight  in  drawing.  Plaster  -  casts  are  always  dead  beside 
living  nature,  and  the  exaggeration  of  the  artist  hardly  makes 
up  for  lost  naivete ;  besides,  they  give  not  at  all  the  right 
opportunity  for  individual  genius.  Like  primitive  peoples, 
children  draw  naively  and  well  according  as  they  observe,  and 
the  old  men  of  the  French  river-drift  period  had  something 
more  valuable  than  the  mere  technique  of  drawing — they  had 
the  genius  that  reproduces  the  life-touch.  We  ought  to  aim 
at  preserving  the  genius  for  drawing  innate  in  the  child  rather 
than  to  create  another  sort  of  artist  by  means  of  instruction 
during  the  school  years.  Something  of  '  the  atrophy  of  the 
power  of  observation,'  and  '  the  barrenness  of  results,'  which 
are  stated  to  be  the  common  effects  of  a  twenty  years'  exist- 


THE   ARTS   OF   CHILDHOOD  211 

ence  of  drawing  as  a  part  of  the  public  school  curriculum  in 
New  York  State,  may  be  read  in  j\Ir  H.  G.  Fitz's  article 
(209,  p.  755),  where  emphasis  is  laid  upon  the  futility  of 
'putting  the  child  in  possession  of  technical  tiicks,  which 
make  observing  facts  of  no  account.'  Mr  Fitz  recommends 
the  setting  aside  or  destroying  of  frec-haud  drawings  as  soon 
as  made,  to  'remove  the  temptation  to  waste  time  in  technical 
finish  that  might,  to  the  pupil's  lasting  benefit,  be  spent  in 
new  efforts  at  discovery,  discriminating  differences  in  various 
enclosed  areas,  values  or  colours.'  Thus,  according  to  Mr 
Fitz,  '  we  might  then  come  to  be  able  to  see  the  beautiful  in 
Nature  spread  at  our  feet,  and  in  common  things  at  our  very 
door,  and  not,  as  now,  under  the  name  of  art,  hew  down  the 
mind  of  the  rising  generation  to  the  narrow  notion  that  the 
beautiful  must  be  sought  only  on  the  canvases  and  in  the 
conventionalities  of  the  past  or  present  age  of  interpreters, 
however  exquisite  or  grand  their  works  may  be.'  We  should 
cease  trying  to  kill  the  art  that  made  art.i 

1  See  the  comprehensive  monograph  of  S.  Levinstein,  Kiiiderzeichun- 
uns;en  bis  znm  14  Lebemjahre  init  Paralklen  axis  dcr  Urgeschiihle 
Ktiltiirgeschichle  uiid  Volkerkunie  (Leipzig,  1905),  and  Dr.  Theodur 
Koch-Grunberg's  Anfiinge  der  A'liiist  iin  £/>-wrt/</ (Berlin,  1906),  for  recent 
comparisons  of  the  pictorial  art  of  the  chiUl  and  primitive  man. 


15 


THE   BORDERLAND   OF   ATAVISM. 

(A  'soft  tail'  on  a  Chinese  boy  eight  years  old,  drawn  by  R. 
A.  Cushman  from  the  figure  in  Bull.  Soc.  d'Aiil/ir.  dc  Paris^ 
1872,  p.  540.) 


CHAPTER    VII 

THE   CHILD   AS    REVEALER    OF   THE   PAST 

Ilvolution  Idea  known  to  Primitive  Peoples. — Evolution,  in 
some  form  or  other,  is  now  the  accepted  doctrine  of  men  of 
science,  with  few  exceptions,  throughout  the  civilised  world, 
and  with  this  theory  is  bound  up  the  essential  oneness  of  all 
phenomena  of  nature  and  all  facts  of  life.  But  this  is,  at 
bottom,  really  no  new  doctrine,  but  the  clearer  statement  and 
satisfactory  demonstration  of  a  very  old  one.  Greece  and 
India  in  very  ancient  times,  as  the  fragments  of  their  philo- 
sophies reveal,  glimpsed  the  general  doctrine,  while  particular 
forms  of  it  belong  to  savage  and  barbarous  peoples  all  over 
the  globe.  The  kinship  of  all  animate,  nay,  of  all  animate 
and  inanimate,  things — evolution,  transformation,  adaptation, 
heredity,  degeneracy,  selection — are  really  all  very  old  ideas, 
known,  in  rude  form,  to  the  ancient  philosophers  of  the  Old 
World  and  to  innumerable  primitive  tribes,  who,  quaintly  and 
curiously  sometimes,  have  dimly  or  clearly  glimpsed  or  antici- 
pated the  thought  of  Lamarck,  Darwin,  Wallace,  Spencer, 
Haeckel,  Cope,  Weismann  and  the  other  great  interpreters  of 
natural  science.  The  Zuhi  Indians,  for  instance,  and  the 
Chinese,  as  Cushing  and  Purini  have  recorded,  had  each  their 
peculiar  and  well-wrought-out  view  of  the  origin  or  develop- 
ment of  man  by  evolution  and  adaptation. 

The  Zuni  legend  of  the  Creation  thus  describes  the  condi- 
tion of  men  when  they  first  emerged  into  the  world  of  daylight 
from  cave-worlds  below  (140,  p.  383) :  '  Men  and  the  creatures 
were  nearer  alike  then  than  now  ;  black  were  our  fathers,  the 
late-born  of  creation,  like  the  caves  from  which  they  came 
forth ;  cold  and  scaly  their  skins  like  those  of  mud-creatures ; 
goggled  their  eyes  like  those  of  an  owl ;  membranous  their 
ears  like  those  of  cave-bats ;  webbed  their  feet  like  those  of 
walkers  in  wet  and  soft  places ;  and,  according  as  they  were 

213 


214  THE   CHILD 

elder  or  younger,  they  had  tails  longer  or  shorter  They 
crouched  when  they  walked,  often,  indeed,  crawling  along  the 
ground  like  toads,  lizards  and  newts  ;  like  infants  who  still 
fear  to  walk  straight,  ihcy  crouched,  as  before-time  they  had 
in  their  cave-worlds,  that  ihcy  might  not  stumble  and  fall,  or 
come  to  hurt  in  the  uncertain  light  thereof.'  The  Zufii 
creation-myth  looks  upon  the  first  men  as  like  unto  little 
children  in  their  progress  and  development,  who  learned 
gradually  through  experience  and  the  instruction  of  the 
gods. 

Evolution  Ofi^afiic  and  ///ofxa/iic:— Sir  Norman  Lockyer, 
in  his  address  '  On  Some  Recent  Advances  in  Spectrum 
Analysis  Relating  to  Inorganic  and  Organic  Evolution,'  looks 
upon  '  life  in  its  various  forms  on  this  planet,  now  acknow- 
ledged to  be  the  work  of  evolution,  as  an  appendix,  as  it 
were,  to  the  work  of  inorganic  evolution,  carried  on  in  a 
perfectly  different  way,'  although  there  are  innumerable  parallels 
in  the  process  (362,  p.  107).  The  recent  advances  of  spectrum 
analysis  have  established  'a  quite  new  bond  between  man  and 
the  stars,'  for  '  not  only  have  we  hydrogen,  oxygen  and  nitro- 
gen among  the  gases  common  to  the  organic  cell  and  the 
hottest  stars' — the  beginnings  of  organic  and  of  inorganic 
evolution — but  chloride  of  sodium,  sodium,  carbonic  acid, 
calcium,  magnesium  and  silica.  By  the  working  over  and 
over  again  of  this  primitive  material  higher  and  higher  forms 
are  produced,  dissolution  leading  to  reproduction  and  evolu- 
tion. According  to  Lockyer,  'the  first  organic  life  was  an 
interaction  somehow  or  other  between  the  undoubted  earliest 
chemical  forms,'  and  death  (dissolution,  destruction  of  parts 
or  wholes)  '  not  so  much  a  question  of  luxiay  for  the  living 
(Professor  Weismann  holds  that  "life  became  limited  in  its 
duration,  not  because  it  was  contrary  to  its  very  nature  to  be 
limited,  but  because  an  unlimited  persistence  of  the  individual 
would  be  a  luxury  without  a  purpose  "),  as  one  of  necessity  in 
order  that  others  might  live ;  it  was  a  case  of  mors  janua  vitcB.^ 
Very  important  in  this  connection  was  '  the  presence  or 
absence,  in  all  regions,  of  an  excess  of  the  early  chemical 
forms  ready  to  be  used  up  in  all  necessary  proportions,'  and  it 
may  be  that '  the  difficulty  was  much  greater  for  land  than  for  sea 
forms ;  that  is,  the  dissolution  of  parts  or  wholes  of  land  forms 
proceeded  with  the  greatest  rapidity.'  From  the  simple  prim- 
ordial life-germs  have  proceeded,  by  'a  long  series  of  modifica- 


THE   CHILD    AS   REVEALER   OF   THE   PAST         21$ 

tions,  or  transformations,  or  both,'  the  variety  of  life  on  the  earth 
to-day,  and  this  organic  evolution  has  been  of  such  a  nature  that, 
'  The  individual  organic  forms  need  not  continuously  advance ; 
all  that  is  required  is,  that  there  shall  be  a  general  advance — 
an  advance  like  that  of  our  modern  civilisation — while  some 
individual  tribes  or  nations,  as  we  know,  stand  still,  or  become 
even  degenerate.'  This  general  continuity  is,  in  a  certain 
sense,  reflected  in  the  life  of  the  individual,  for  in  it  the  life- 
history  of  the  earth  is  reproduced.  Sir  Norman  Lockyer 
assumes  that  life  on  earth  began  with  the  common  life-plasma, 
out  of  which  developed,  on  the  one  hand,  the  algae-like 
first  aquatic  plants,  and,  on  the  other,  the  monera  and 
amoeb?e,  the  first  animal  forms,  while,  in  time,  from  the  fishes 
were  developed  the  amphibians  and  reptiles,  from  which  latter 
came  the  birds  and  mammals,  and,  by  continued  evolution  of 
the  mammals,  the  anthropoids  and  man.  Both  inorganic  and 
organic  evolution  have  started  from  'a  stage  of  simplest 
forms,'  and  progress  has  been,  in  both  cases,  'a  growth  in 
complexity.' 

Plant  afjd  Animal  Evolution. — The  common  life -plasma, 
from  which,  along  two  divergent  lines,  vegetable  and  animal, 
the  development  of  life  on  the  globe  has  taken  place,  was, 
probably,  according  to  Professor  L.  H.  Bailey,  '  more  animal- 
like than  plant-like.'  The  mycetozoa  of  the  zoologists,  the 
myxomycetes  of  the  botanist,  organisms  which  'at  one  stage 
of  their  existence  are  amoeba-like,  that  is,  animal-like,  but  at 
another  stage  are  sporiferous,  or  plant-like,'  preserve,  '  closely 
and  possibly  exactly,  the  stage  in  which  this  life-plasma  first 
began  to  assume  plant-like  functions'  (19,  p.  453).  Since  the 
divergence  '  the  symbol  of  animal  evolution  has  been  bilateralism, 
and  the  symbol  of  plant  evolution  circumlateralism.'  Plants 
lost  bilateralism  and  concentration  when  they  became,  as  Cope 
has  it,  '  earth  parasites,'  and  in  their  search  for  food  had  to  be- 
come centrifugal,  abandoning  the  tendency  towards  '  the 
cephalic  or  head-forming  evolution,'  which  materialised  in  the 
worms,  creatures  '  characterised  by  a  two-sided  or  bilateral,  and, 
therefore,  more  or  less  longitudinal  structure,'  and  from  which 
worm  form  '  all  the  higher  ranges  of  zootypic  evolution  have 
sprung,  and  one  is  almost  tempted  to  read  a  literal  truth  into 
David's  lamentation  that  "  I  am  a  worm  and  no  man."  '  Pro- 
fessor Bailey  prefers  '  retarded  evolution  '  as  better  than  Cope's 
'degeneracy,'  or  such  terms  as  catagenesis  or   decadence  to 


2l6  THE   CHILD 

express  the  development  that  has  gone  on  in  the  plant-world, 
but  even  such  a  term  is  hardly  suitable,  for  'plant  types  ex- 
hibit quite  as  complete  an  adaptation  to  an  enormous  variety 
of  conditions  as  animals  do,  and  there  has  been  rapid  progress 
towards  specialisation  of  structure.'  Nor  has  there  been  in 
the  plant-world  as  a  whole  'any  backward  step,  any  loss  of 
characters  once  gained,  any  stationary  or  retarded  periods.' 
The  greater  part  of  present  differences  in  organism  are  '  the 
result,  directly  and  indirectly,  of  external  stimuli,  until  we  come 
into  those  higher  ranges  of  being  in  which  sensation  and 
volition  have  developed,  and  in  which  the  effects  of  use  and 
disuse,  and  of  psychological  states  have  become  increasingly 
more  important  as  factors  of  ascent.'  In  other  words,  heredity 
itself  is  'an  acquired  character,  the  same  as  form  or  colour 
or  sensation  is,  and  not  an  original  endowment  of  matter ' ;  the 
power  to  transmit  hereditarily  'did  not  originate  until  for  some 
reason  it  was  necessary  for  a  given  character  to  reproduce 
itself,  and  the  longer  any  form  or  character  was  perpetuated  the 
stronger  became  the  hereditary  power.'  The  weakness  of 
heredity  is  characteristic  of  the  earlier  forms  of  the  life-plasma, 
and  there  is  little  doubt  of  the  general  truth  of  the  statement 
put  forward  by  Professor  H.  S.  Wilson,  in  his  Geological 
Biolog}',  that  '  mutability  is  the  law  of  organic  action,  perma- 
nency the  acquired  law '  (19,  p.  458).  Mere  growth,  as  Bailey 
points  out,  is  variation  and  results  in  difference;  plants,  at 
least,  '  cannot  grow  without  being  unlike,'  and  the  power  of 
growth  is  sufficient  in  itself  '  to  originate  many  and  important 
variations  in  plants,'  a  view  shared  essentially  by  Cope  and 
Eimer.  The  thesis  of  Professor  Bailey's  more  recent  study, 
The  Survival  of  the  Unlike,  is  that  dissimilarity  of  offspring,  as 
compared  with  their  parents,  is  a  factor  favourable  to  their 
survival  in  the  world  of  life,  i.e.,  dissimilarity  or  variability 
chiefly  due  to  the  action  of  the  milieu  and  environment  ('soil, 
weather,  climate,  food,  training,  conflict  with  fellows,  strain  and 
stress  of  wind  and  wave  and  insect  visitors '),  the  result  being 
that  'there  are  as  many  species  as  there  are  unlike  conditions 
in  physical  and  environmental  nature,  and  in  proportion  as  the 
conditions  are  unlike  and  local  are  the  species  well  defined.' 
The  chief  merit  in  the  survivors  being  unlikeness,  the  fittest 
being  really  the  unlike,  Bailey  proposes,  in  lieu  of  the  '  survival 
of  the  fittest,'  the  expression  the  'survival  of  the  unlike^' as 
presenting  in  a  new  light  'the  old  truth  of  vicarious  or  non- 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE   PAST         217 

designed  evolution.'  Nature's  end,  according  to  Bailey,  is 
'perfect  adaptation';  nothing  is  known  to  her  per  se,  as 
species,  or  as  fixed  types,  for  '  Species  were  created  by  John 
Ray,  not  by  the  Lord ;  they  were  named  by  Linnaeus,  not  by 
Adam.'  The  unlikeness  of  plants  enabling  them  to  survive  by 
entering  fields  of  least  competition,  a  phenomenon  ultimately 
due  to  the  plasticity  of  the  original  life-plasma,  the  influence  of 
external  stimuli,  the  growth-force  and  sexual  mixing,  is  the 
greatest  fact  in  the  vegetable  world.  Such  is,  in  brief,  the  out- 
line of  the  evolution  of  the  present  flora,  from  its  starting- 
point  in  aquatic  life.  Longevity,  winter  quiescence,  sizes, 
shapes  and  habits,  have  come  by  adaptation  to  conditions  of 
life ;  *  the  first  plants  had  no  well-defined  cycles,  and  they  were 
born  to  live,  not  to  die ' ;  death  is  not  an  inherent,  but  an  ac- 
quired character  of  life-matter,  'a  result  of  the  survival  of  the 
fittest,'  the  sacrifice  of  some  for  others.  A  wonderful  story  of 
adaptation  to  environment  and  the  survival  of  the  unlike  is 
contained  in  the  history  of  the  conditionof  the  plant-world  after 
the  earth  began  to  age  and  grow  colder.  Professor  Bailey 
has,  apparently,  none  too  much  sympathy  with  'the  attempt  to 
evolve  many  of  the  forms  of  plants  (spines,  prickles,  acrid 
and  poisonous  qualities,  etc.),  as  a  mere  protection  from 
assumed  enemies,'  and  his  statement  that  the  original  life- 
plasma  was  more  animal-like  than  plant-like,  is  also  in  opposition 
to  the  majority  of  authorities  who  presume  the  derivation  of 
animal  from  plant,  and  not  the  divergence  of  plant-life  from 
something  nearer  the  animal. 

Mammalian  Evolution. — Darwin,  after  a  most  rigorous  and 
extensive  investigation  of  the  phenomena  of  animal  life  and 
variation,  came  to  the  conclusion  that  '  man  is  the  co-descend- 
ant with  other  mammals  of  a  common  progenitor,'  and  still 
'bears  in  his  bodily  frame  the  indelible  stamp  of  his  lowly 
origin.'  And,  in  spite  of  the  efforts  of  naturalists  like  Wallace 
to  declare  that  the  mind  of  man  is  of  a  different  order  of  descent 
than  that  of  his  body,  the  general  results  of  the  researches 
in  comparative  animal  and  human  psychology  since  Darwin's 
time  are  to  proclaim  for  his  intellectual  endowment  the  same 
lowly  origin,  traces  of  which  yet  linger  in  his  feelings  and 
thoughts,  his  instincts  and  his  emotions.  But  while  it  is 
certain  that  man  is  the  highest  product  of  incalculable  ages  of 
vital  evolution,  and  that  he  springs,  physically  and  mentally, 
from  the  animal  kindred  beneath  him,  proof  of  such  kinship 


2l8  THE  CHILD 

being  fairly  abundant,  the  steps  of  his  genealogy  have  some  of 
them,  notwithstanding  the  exact  enumeration  of  HKckel,  yet 
to  be  made  out,  while  dogmatism  about  some  others  is  scarcely 
justifiable. 

The  ancestor  of  man  and  the  other  mammals,  'the  pro- 
mammal,'  must  have  been,  according  to  Professor  Osborne,^ 
*  a  small  terrestrial  animal,  either  insectivorous  or  omnivorous  in 
its  habits.'  Osborne  emphasises  the  importance  of  '  the  law  of 
adaptive  or  functional  radiation,  whereby  mammals  have  re- 
peatedly diverged  from  small  unspecialised  focal  types  into 
aquatic,  arboreal,  volant,  herbivorous  and  carnivorous  orders.' 
It  would  also  appear  that  just  at  present  the  evidence  points 
to  the  derivation  of  all  aquatic  types  out  of  land  types,  the 
former  being  secondary. 

Professor  O.  C.  Marsh,  the  eminent  American  palaeon- 
tologist, expressed  himself  thus-  concerning  the  origin  of 
mammals  :  '  The  birds,  like  the  mammals,  have  developed 
certain  characters  higher  than  those  of  the  reptiles,  and  thus 
seem  to  approach  each  other.  I  doubt,  however,  if  the  two 
classes  are  connected  genetically,  unless  in  a  very  remote  way. 
Reptiles,  although  much  lower  in  rank  than  birds,  resemble 
mammals  in  various  ways,  but  this  may  be  only  an  adaptive 
likeness.  Both  of  these  classes  may  be  made  up  of  complex 
groups  only  distantly  related.  Having  both  developed  along 
similar  lines,  they  exhibit  various  points  of  resemblance  that 
may  easily  be  taken  for  indications  of  real  affinity.  In  the 
amphibians,  especially  in  the  oldest  forms,  there  are  hints  of  a 
true  relationship  with  both  reptiles  and  mammals  '  (406,  p.  409). 
Professor  Marsh  is,  therefore,  led  to  think  that  '  in  some  of  the 
minute  primitive  forms,  as  old  as  the  Devonian,  if  not  still 
more  ancient,  we  may  yet  find  the  key  to  the  great  mystery  of 
the  origin  of  mammals.' 

It  is  in  the  light  of  such  statements  that  we  should  read 
Haeckel's  scheme  of  the  genealogy  of  man,  in  so  far  as  the  pre- 
human and  pre-anthropoid  stages  are  concerned,  for  there  are 
many  links  that  cannot  yet  be  filled  to  a  certainty.  Dubois's 
discovery  in  1891,  in  a  river-deposit  of  Java,  of  the  remains  of 
what  he  termed  the  J^ithccanthropus  crcdus,  seems  to  have  added 
one  new  link  to  the  chain  which  must  ultimately  be  revealed 

1  Nature,  Vol.  LVIII.  p.  427. 

"^  At  the  International  Congress  of  Zoology  (Cambridge,  England), 
August  25,  1898. 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE    PAST         2ig 

as  connecting  man  with  his  precursors,  and  with  their  cognates, 
the  anthropoids. 

Professor  A.  S.  Packard,  commenting  upon  the  facts  of  the 
elimination  of  countless  tertiary  mammals,  the  great  progress 
of  specialisation,  and,  in  particular,  the  gradual  increase  in  the 
size  of  the  brain  ('  those  of  certain  existing  mammals  being 
eight  times  as  large  in  proportion  to  the  bulk  of  the  body  as 
those  of  their  early  tertiary  ancestors'),  says  (471,  p.  321): 
'This,  of  course,  means  that  animal  shrewdness,  cunning,  and 
other  intellectual  qualities,  the  result  of  semi-social  attrition 
and  competition,  had  begun  to  displace  the  partly  physical 
factors,  and  in  the  primates  these  may  have  in  the  beginning 
led  to  the  appearance  of  man,  a  social  animal,  with  the  power 
of  speech,  and  all  the  intelligent  moral  and  spiritual  qualities, 
which  perhaps  primarily  owe  their  genesis  to  increased  brain- 
power.' And  so  it  came  about  that  the  final  outcome  of 
nebular,  geological,  biological  evolution  appeared  in  man, 
*  whose  physical  development  was  practically  completed  at  the 
beginning  of  the  quaternary  period,  and  whose  intellectual  and 
moral  improvement  have,  as  it  were,  but  just  begun.'  The 
'  capacity  for  progress,'  which  is  the  characteristic  of  man  above 
all  other  creatures,  has  now  become  his  chief  distinctive  mark, 
and  writers  like  Novicow,  in  his  discussion  of  the  social 
struggles  of  the  human  race,  can  catch  glimpses  of  a  law  of 
acceleration,  a  principle  ruling  in  social  phenomena,  like  that 
of  Galileo  in  physics.  But,  as  Darwin  said,  man  'bears  the 
indelible  stamp  of  his  lowly  origin,'  and  ever  in  the  midst  of 
progress  seem  to  surge  up  again  the  traits  of  his  ancient  kin. 

Atavism. — With  the  immense  and  varied  ancestry  man  has 
had,  and  the  infinitude  of  his  connections  with  the  rest  of 
the  animal  world, — Gadow,  in  his  classification  of  'recent 
and  extinct  vertebrates,'  admits  7328  species  of  fishes,  925 
species  of  amphibia,  3441  species  of  reptiles,  9818  species  of 
birds,  some  1000  mammifers — atavism,  'discontinuous  heredity,' 
as  Virchow  terms  it,  or  '  a  modality,  the  generic  form  of  which 
is  heredity,'  according  to  Dally,  is  a  most  interesting  as  well  as 
difficult  subject  of  investigation,  one  in  which  facts  of  exceed- 
ingly small  importance  may  be  excessively  magnified  and 
others  of  vital  significance  completely  ignored,  especially  when 
the  mental  development  of  the  individual  and  the  race  is  added 
to  the  physical,  and  studied  in  all  its  ramifications. 

TVi'de  Range  of  Atavisms. — Naturally  enough,  the  physical 


220 


THE   CHILD 


'atavisms'  of  man,  those  bodily  resemblances  to  his  remote 
ancestors,  are  the  most  striking.  The  great  range  of  such 
possible  'reversions'  (for  it  has  been  questioned  whether 
many  of  them  may  be  strictly  so  termed)  may  be  seen  from  the 
following  table,  compiled  from  the  data  in  Talbot's  study  of 
Degeneracy^  and  Demoor,  Massart  and  Vandervelde's  Regressive 
Evolution  : — 


No. 

Characteristic 

Reversion,  or  Atavism  to  or  towards 
Condition  of 

I. 

Cyclopean  Monsters 

Single  eyed  sea-squirts  (ascidians) 

2. 

Large  Orbit  (Kyes) 

Lemurs 

3- 

Supernumerary  Teeth 

Lemurarius ;  limnotherium 

4- 

'  Hutchinson's  Teeth ' 

Chameleon 

S- 

V-Shaped  Dental  Arch 

Reptiles 

6. 

Saddle  -  shaped       Dental 
Arch 

Lower  mammals 

7- 

Thirteenth  pair  of  I\ibs 

Gibbon 

8. 

Tail  (caudal  remnants) 

Monkeys  below  anthropoids 

9- 

Supernumerary  milk- 
glands 

Lemurs 

lO. 

Gout  (Hver,  kidney) 

Sauropsida 

II. 

Myx(tdematous  skin 

Invertebrates 

12. 

Ichthyosis  (skin) 

Fish 

n- 

Spina  bifida 

Lower  Fish 

14. 

Merycism  (rumination) 

Ruminants 

15- 

Multiple  Births 

Lower  Vertebrates 

Some  Physical  Atavisms  iti  Alan  and  their  Relations. — An 
excellent  resume  of  the  data  concerning  '  Atavism  in  Man '  was 
published  by  Dr  Blanchard  in  1885,  and  from  his  article  and 
other  more  recent  sources  the  following  table  has  been  com- 
piled, which  contains  some  of  the  chief  'atavisms  '  of  a  physical 
nature  observable  in  the  human  race,  and  indications  of  their 
rarity,  frequency,  etc. : — 


No. 

Characteristic. 

Frequency,  Rarity,  Normality,  etc. 

I. 

2, 

Small  cranial  capacity 

Marked      depressions 
on  internal  face  of 
cranial  vault 

rare   in   tall    human    races ;    more    or   less 

frequent  in    idiots,  earliest  known   man  ; 

normal  in  gorilla,  chimpanzee,  etc. 
rarest    in    white    race ;     more    common    in 

lower  races  of  man,  idiots,  degenerates; 

normal  in  most  quadrupeds 

THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE   PAST         221 


No. 


13- 
14. 

15- 
16. 


Characteristic. 


Anterior  commence- 
ment of  ossification 
of  sutures 

Persistence  of  frontal 
suture 


Interparietal  (epactal) 
bone 


Reversed  ptcrion 


Divison  of  temporal 
bone 

Persistence  of  mas- 
toido-temporal  sut- 
ure 

Basiotic  (inter-occi- 
pito-sphenoidal  bone 

Median  occipital  fossa 


Absence  of  nasal  sut- 
ure 

Intermaxillary    bone, 
OS  incisivuiii 


Styloid   apophyses  of 
vertebrae 

Simple    apophysis   of 
cervical  vertebrae 

Tail,     caudal     verte- 
brre,  etc. 


Angle  of  torsion  of 
humerus  notably  in- 
ferior to  160° 


Frequency,  Rarity,  Normality,  etc. 


rarest  in  highest  types  of  man  ;  more  common 

in  some  lower  races  (Negroes,  e.g.),  idiots, 

degenerates  ;  normal  in  apes 
rarest  in  some  lower  races  of  man  ;   more 

common  in  highest  races,  most  common 

in  white  females  ;  normal  in  human  foetus, 

most  mammifers 
rare   in   white    adults ;    more    common   in 

several  species  of  monkeys,  human  foetus, 

ancient  Peruvian  and  Arizonian  Indians  ; 

normal  in  the  rhinoceros,  some  rodents, 

most  marsupials 
rare  in  white  race  ;   more  common  in  some- 

of  the  lower  races  of  man  (Negroes,  e.g.) ; 

normal  in  apes 
rare  in  apes  and  man  ;  normal  in  vertebrates, 

except  mammifers 
more  or  less  frequent  in  man  ;   normal  in 

horse,  etc. 

rare  in  man  (except  monsters) ;  normal  in 
simoedosaurus 

rare  in  highest  types  of  man  ;  more  common 
in  some  lower  races  of  man,  degenerates, 
criminals,  the  gibbon ;  very  little  devel- 
oped in  gorilla,  orang,  chimpanzee ; 
normal  in  many  mammifers 

rare  in  Europeans ;  more  common  in  some 
lower  races  of  man  (Hottentots,  Bushmen, 
etc. ) ;  normal  in  apes 

rare  in  adult  man,  older  children,  and 
many  adult  apes  ;  more  common  in  human 
fceli,  very  young  infants  and  apes  ;  normal 
in  ornitliorhynchus 

rare  even  in  Negroes  ;  more  common  (rudi- 
mentary) on  some  vertebrae  in  Hylobates ; 
normal  in  apes 

rare  in  white  race  ;  more  common  in  some 
lower  races  (Hottentots,  e.g.);  normal  in 
anthropoids  and  other  apes 

rare  in  adult  man  and  anthropoids ;  more 
common  in  young  children,  certain  East 
Indian  peoples ;  normal  in  human  em- 
bryos up  to  fourth  month,  many  lower 
animals 

rare  in  white  race  ;  more  common  in  lower 
races  and  prehistoric  man ;  normal  in 
anthropoids,  monkeys,  carnivora 


222 


THE   CHILD 


No. 


17- 


19. 


Ciiaracteribtic. 


23- 

24. 

25- 

26. 
27. 

28. 
29. 


Frequency,  Rarity,  Normality,  etc. 


32. 


Olecranic  pcrforuliun 
of  humerus 

Great  toe  shorter  than 
other  toes 

Prehensile  foot ;  wider 
space  between  first 
two  toes 

Exaggerated  develop- 
ment of  canine  teeth 

Division  of  left  lobe 
of  liver,  lobiilus  cau- 
datus 

Lohtis  impar  at  base 
of  right  lung 

Disposition  of  hair  on 
arms 

Hypertichosis  univer- 
salis 


Absence  of  lobule  of 
car 

Ability  to  move  the 
ear 

Lacrhymal  caruncle, 
nictitating  mem- 
brane of  eye 

Multilobate  or  separ- 
ate kidney,  Wolffian 
body 

Retention  of  testicles  in 
abdomen,  cryptor- 
chidia 

Hypospadias,  imper- 
forate, posteriorly 
furrowed  jtenis 

Bitid  gland,  l)ifid  penis 
(anteriorly) 

Exaggerated  develop- 
ment  of  labia 
mi  110 J- a  (female 
genitals) 


rarest  in  white  race  ;  more  common  in  lower 
races  and  early  man  ;  normal  in  anthro- 
poids and  certain  other  monkeys 
rare  in  white  race  ;  more  common  in  lower 
races  of  man,  human  embryo ;  normal  in 
anthrojwids 

rare  (except  by  training)  in  adult  whites ; 
more  or  less  frequent  in  young  children, 
some  East  Asiatic  peoples  —  Chinese, 
Japanese,  Negroes  ;  normal  in  anthropoids 

rarest  in  white  race  ;  more  common  in  lower 
races  (Australians,  Melanesians,  etc.)  and 
prehistoric  man  ;  normal  in  apes 

more  or  less  frequent  in  man,  orang,  chim- 
panzee, gibbon  ;  normal  in  gorilla,  some 
gibbons,  other  monkeys,  other  mammifers 

not  very  rare  in  man ;  more  common  in 
lower  races,  human  monsters ;  normal  in 
quadrupeds 

normal  in  man,  anthropoid  apes,  some 
American  monkeys 

rare  in  white  race  (except  lanugo  of  embryo); 
more  common  in  lower  races  of  Eastern 
Asia  ;  normal  in  anthropoids,  monkeys, 
other  mammals 

rarest  in  white  race  ;  more  common  in  some 
of  the  lower  races,  idiots,  cagots ;  normal 
in  apes 

not  exceedingly  rare  in  man — rarest  in  the 
white  race  ;  normal  in  quadrupeds 

very  rudimentary  in  white  race  ;  often  ex- 
aggerated in  some  lower  races  of  man  ; 
normal  in  fishes,  sauropsidians  (except 
ophidians),  many  vertebrates 

not  very  rare  in  man  ;  normal  in  ophidians 
and  birds  (embryo) 

not  very  rare  in  man  ;  normal  in  monotremes, 
celacepe,  pinnipeds,  elephants,  etc. 

rare  in  man ;  normal  in  certain  reptiles 
(crocodile,  etc.) 

rare  in  man  ;  normal  in  monotremes,  very 
many  marsupials 

rarest  m  white  races  ;  more  common  in  some 
lower  races  (Bushmen,  Hottentots)  ; 
normal  in  certain  anthrop®ids,  chim- 
panzee especially 


THE   CHILD   AS    REVEALER   OF   THE    PAST         223 


No. 

Characteristic. 

Frequency,  Rarity,  Normality,  etc. 

33- 
34- 

Double  uterus,  double 

vagina 
Bilobate  placenta 

not  extremely  rare  in  woman  ;    normal  in 

most  marsupials 
rare    in    woman ;    normal    in    Old    World 

monkeys 

*  Rudimentary '  Organs.  Regressive  Evolution.  —  The  so- 
called  '  reduced '  or  '  rudimentary '  (for  the  two  words  are 
synonymous  with  some  writers)  organs  of  man  are  very 
numerous.  Advance  has  been  often,  not  by  the  development 
of  new  organs,  but  by  the  reduction  of  old  ones, — in  a  sense, 
every  progress  has  seen  a  regression.  In  his  discussion  of 
'  Senescence  and  Rejuvenation,'  and  elsewhere,  Professor  C  S. 
Minot  emphasises  the  evolutionary  ro/e  of  the  loss  of  characters. 
Evolution  'depends  not  only  on  the  acquisition  of  new 
characteristics,  but  also  very  largely  on  the  loss  of  character- 
istics ;  this  loss,  exemplified  in  the  gill  cleft  and  arches  of  the 
higher  vertebrates,  affects  the  early  embryonic  stages,  appar- 
ently to  allow  the  embryonic  material  to  undergo  a  new 
development.' 

In  the  course  of  phylogenetic  evolution  all  organisms  have 
suffered  the  loss  of  some  organ  or  other;  the  lost  organ 
persisting  sometimes  in  a  reduced  state  in  the  individual 
members  of  the  species,  or  being  found  in  organisms  which 
are  considered  ancestors  of  those  not  possessing  it.  The 
widespread  character  of  this  '  survival  of  reduced  organs '  is 
emphasised  by  Demoor,  Massart  and  Vandervelde,  in  their 
account  of  regressive  evolution  in  biology  and  sociology,  etc. 
In  man,  among  other  '  reduced  organs,'  we  have  the  hair  on 
the  surface  of  the  body  (which  shows,  however,  sporadic 
increase),  the  last  molar  (indeed,  according  to  Hertwig,  all 
the  teeth,  part  of  the  tegumentary  system,  are  only  the  spine- 
scales  of  the  rays  introduced  into  the  buccal  cavity) ;  the 
terminal  epiphyses  of  the  vertebrae  (characterising  certain 
mammals  in  youth,  though  lost  in  the  Sirenians) ;  the  cervical 
vertebrae  (more  numerous  and  functionally  important  in  the 
crocodile,  e.g.) ;  the  coccyx  (the  remnant  of  the  tail,  so 
enormously  developed  in  certain  of  the  vertebrates) ;  the 
little  horns  of  the  hyoid  bone,  the  coracoid  apophysis,  the 
inter-clavicular   ligament,   etc. ;   the   muscles   for   raising    the 


224  THE   CHILD 

skin,  the  muscles  of  the  outer  ear  and  the  motor  muscles  of 
the  tail  (well  developed  in  most  of  the  mammifers),  the  intra- 
acetabular  (contained  in  the  cotyloid  cavity)  part  of  the  deep 
flexor  toe-muscle  (which  though  existing  in  a  functional  state 
in  certain  animals,  young  ostriches,  e.^i^.,  has  completely 
disappeared  in  the  orang-outang)  ;  the  pineal  gland  (last 
relic  of  a  formerly  functioning  visual  organ),  the////////  ierminak 
of  the  spinal  marrow  (continuing  the  spinal  marrow  to  the 
end  of  the  coccyx) ;  the  coecum  and  the  vermiform  appendix 
(functional  "in  the  ruminants),  the  valvules  of  the  intercostal 
veins  (destined  to  indirectly  favour  the  ascent  of  blood  by 
preventing  its  fall,  in  the  quadrupeds,  with  whom  the  inter- 
costal veins  are  vertical,  not  almost  horizontal  as  in  man) ;  the 
nose  (a  reduced  organ  of  Jacobson) ;  the  reduced  third  eyelid  ; 
the  Darwinian  tubercle  on  the  ear  (the  relic  of  an  ancestral 
long  and  pointed  ear) ;  the  Wolffian  body  (a  primitive  kidney), 
the  epidydymus,  the  organ  of  Rosenmiiller,  the  vas  aberrans, 
etc.  Besides  these  reduced  physical  organs,  the  authors  note, 
we  have  numerous  survivals  of  reduction  in  the  social  organism, 
even  in  the  cities,  civilisations,  states  and  societies  of  most 
recent  formation  —  religious,  juridical,  institutional,  social 
survivals.  Among  these  might  be  mentioned  :  circumcision 
(as  practised  by  American  Jews) ;  certain  forms  of  salutation 
(in  democratic  countries) ;  the  Lord's  Supper  (in  Unitarian 
churches) ;  the  calendar  (the  week  and  month  names) ;  the 
town-meeting  (surviving  in  New  Haven,  Connecticut,  alongside 
the  city  council) ;  the  mass-meetings  (in  Canadian  towns  and 
cities) ;  birth,  marriage  and  funeral  rites  and  ceremonies ; 
political  and  regimental ///rt^Y/^/i- and  amulets  of  all  sorts;  fast- 
ing and  stated  feasts  ;  marriage  by  simple  consent  (still  legal  in 
Scotland  and  New  York)  ;  the  subjection  of  women  and  the 
unequal  privileges  of  the  husband,  etc. 

^Hydro-Psychoses^ —  Water-atavisms.  —  In  his  paper  on 
'  Hydro-Psychoses,'  Dr  F.  E.  Bolton  brings  together  some  of 
what  he  terms  '  the  abundant  proofs  of  man's  pelagic  ancestry  ' 
— the  vestigial  and  other  characters,  which,  as  Drummond  says, 
'  smack  of  the  sea,'  hints  of  the  aquatic  stages,  from  the  earliest 
water  life  to  the  'amphibian  interlude,'  which  preceded  his  real 
land  life.  And  an  '  ancient  and  fish-like  tale  '  it  is  in  many  re- 
spects.   Among  the  chief  '  water-atavisms '  are  the  following  : — 

I.  The  fish-like  and  amphibian-like  appearances  of  the  early 
human  embryo — made  much  of  by  Drummond  and  others. 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEyVLER   OF   THE   TAST         22  5 

2.  Certain  fish-like  appearances  of  the  brain  of  the  human 
embryo  in  its  early  stages— emphasised  by  De  Varigny. 

3.  The  fish-like  type  of  the  construction  of  the  heart  of 
the  embryonic  young  of  air-breathing  vertebrates  at  a  certain 
stage  of  their  development  —  discussed  by  Romanes  after 
Darwin,  etc. 

4.  The  lungs  of  air-breathing  vertebrates,  which  have  super- 
seded gills,  and  are  themselves  the  modified  swim-bladders  or 
floats  of  fish — as  Darwin  noted. 

5.  The  visceral  clefts  of  gill-slits  in  the  neck-region,  dis- 
cernible in  the  human  embryo  when  3-4  mm.  long,  but 
beginning  to  disappear  by  the  fourth  week  of  foetal  life — one 
of  the  first  '  vestigial  structures,' to  be  discussed,  and  productive 
of  many  extravagant  theories.  According  to  various  authorities, 
the  metamorphoses  of  these  embryonic  gill-slits  have  produced 
the  thymus  and  the  thyroid  gland,  the  mouth,  the  olfactory 
organs,  the  middle  and  outer  ear,  etc.  ;  but  a  good  deal  of  this 
is  very  doubtful.  Children  are  born  sometimes  with  the  gill- 
slits,  not  only  externally  visible,  a  rather  common  occurrence, 
but  open— while  small  openings  in  the  neck,  round  patches  of 
white  skin,  etc.,  may  continue  to  mark  the  place  of  these  clefts 
for  a  long  time.  The  so-called  '  neck-ears  '  belong  to  the  same 
class  of  anomalies.  In  their  study  of  congenial  affections  of 
the  neck  and  head,  Lannelongue  and  Menard  attribute  many 
malformations  of  the  ears  and  neck  to  the  persistence  of 
piscine  or  amphibian  stages  of  development  in  the  embryo  (349)- 

6.  The  hand  of  man,  while  in  function  one  of  the  most 
highly  developed  of  organs,  is  in  shape  and  bones  '  more  like 
the  primitive  amphibian  paddle  than  is  the  limb  of  any  other 
mammal.'  There  is  thus  justification  for  the  statement  of 
Emerson,  made,  according  to  Moncure  D.  Conway  (501),  in 
the  winter  of  1833-1834,  'the  brother  of  man's  hand  is  even 
now  cleaving  the  Arctic  Sea  in  the  fin  of  the  whale,  and, 
innumerable  ages  since,  was  pawing  the  marsh  in  the  fiipper  of 
thesaurus.'  Many  anomalies  and  peculiarities  of  hands,  feet, 
limbs  and  digits  can  be  attributed  to  the  fact  that  'the 
human  limbs  are  developments  from  the  fin-folds  as  found  in 
fishes  and  the  human  embryo'  (625,  p.  262). 

7.  The  swaying  from  side  to  side,  and  forward  and  back- 
ward, very  noticeable  in  small  school-children,  and  possibly 
other  reflex  rhythmic  and  oscillatory  movements,  may  be 
'recrudescences  of  former  aquatic  life.' 


226  THE   CHILD 

8.  Many  of  the  sensations  had  during  sleep,— gliding, 
flying,  hovering,  swimming,  floating,  jumping,  etc. — point, 
perhaps,  to  ancient  afjualic  existence,  and  are  a  '  faint,  reminis- 
cent atavistic  echo  from  the  {jriincval  sea,'  to  use  the  words  of 
President  Mall. 

9.  The  tendency  (jf  women  t(j  eonniiit  suicide  by  drowning 
(much  more  marked  than  in  men),  may  sometimes  be  explained 
by  'a  temporary  or  permanent  suspension  of  control  by  the 
higher  psychic  centres  allowing  a  recrudescence  of  the  old  love 
for  aquatic  conditions.' 

10.  The  extreme  delight  (after  the  shock  of  the  first 
contact)  taken  by  most  babies  in  splashing  and  tumbling 
about  in  water,  the  keen  joy  of  children  in  paddling,  splashing 
about,  lying  down  in  and  capering  about  in  water,  the 
passionate  love  of  bathing  and  swimming,  and  of  being  out 
in  the  rain,  not  confined  to  children  and  youth,  but  shared 
often  by  adults — all  this  suggests  us  one  factor,  at  least,  'a 
survival  of  the  old  time  life  in  an  aquatic  medium.' 

11.  The  great  ro/e  played  by  water  in  the  primitive  con- 
cepts of  life  everywhere  in  religion,  mythology,  poetry, 
philosophical  speculation,  child-lore,  etc.,  suggests  'psychic 
reverberations '  from  ancient  physical  facts. 

Useful  for  comparison  with  these  atavistic  traits  in  man  is  the 
study  of  such  creatures  as  have  retrograded  from  land-animals 
into  water-animals  or  are  in  process  of  becoming  such :  The  whale, 
porpoise,  dolphin,  once  quadrupedal  mammals,  but  modified 
in  form  to  suit  sea-life  and  swimming,  until  they  are  very  fish- 
like in  appearance  ;  the  seal,  a  carnivorous  animal  adapted  to  a 
life  in  the  water;  the  dugong  and  manatee ;  the  walrus,  the  sea- 
lion,  the  beaver,  the  South  American  web-footed  opossum,  the 
duck-billed  platypus,  the  polar  bear,  etc.,  all  show  the  modify- 
ing effects  of  a  partial  sea  or  water  life. 

In  a  very  interesting  paper  on  '  Survival  Movements  of 
Human  Infancy,'  Dr  A.  A.  Mumford  (451,  p.  297)  suggests 
the  possible  derivation  from  the  movements  and  habits  of 
man's  aquatic  ancestors,  among  other  things  of  the  following  : 
(a)  the  '  paddle-movement '  of  the  hands  of  the  waking  child 
during  the  first  three  months  of  life — '  slow,  rhythmical  move- 
ments of  flexion  and  extension  occur,  which,  instead  of  possess- 
ing the  quick,  incisive  character  of  voluntary  movements, 
partake  of  the  sluggish  rhythm  so  familiar  to  the  visitor  to  the 
tanks  of  an  aquarium  ;  (/^)  the  stroking  (floor,  table  or  other 


tup:  child  as  revealer  of  the  past      227 

surface)  movements,  palms    flat   downwards,    fingers   directly 
forwards,  as  the  young  child  when  crawling. 

Monkey  Atavisms. — The  human  infant,  it  will  readily  be 
seen,  may  start  in  life  with  not  a  few  reminiscences  of  the 
pathway  over  which  the  race  and  animal-kind  have  travelled 
some  of  which  he  is  sure  to  lose  ere  he  comes  into  the  estate 
of  mankind.  It  is  with  considerable  justice,  then,  that  Mr  S. 
S.  Buckman,  in  his  entertaining  studies  of  '  Babies  and 
Monkeys'  (89,  p.  372),  plays  havoc  with  the  fond  delusion  of 
parents,  nurses,  and  visitors,  that  the  infant  is  the  '  very  image' 
of  its  father  or  its  mother,  a  statement  which  is  '  a  gross  libel, 
sometimes  on  the  baby,  sometimes  on  the  parent.'  It  is, 
indeed,  hard  to  believe  '  that  the  small-jawed,  long  and  promi- 
nent-nosed individual,  with  high  forehead,  was,  in  babyhood, 
prognathous,  short  and  snub-nosed,  with  a  remarkably  receding 
forehead,'  for  the  differences  between  the  baby  and  the  adult, 
in  the  human  race,  are  often  'greater  than  the  differences 
between  some  species  of  animals.'  The  mother  is  sometimes 
nearer  the  mark,  when  she  styles  her  offspring  Tittle  monkey,' 
and  the  pet  and  scolding  names  of  children  all  over  the  world 
run  in  like  direction  and  give,  as  it  were,  evidence  of  an 
unconscious  belief  of  the  animal  resemblance  and  brute 
ancestry  of  the  human  young.  A  curious  list  of  such  appella- 
tions is  given  by  President  Hall,  in  his  paper  on  '  Some 
Aspects  of  the  Early  Sense  of  Self  (275,  p.  368). 

Among  the  bodily  characteristics  which  smack  of  the 
monkey  in  the  human  child,  Mr  Buckman  notes  the  following  : — 

I.  Nose. — The  word  simia  (whence  our  'simian'  is  pro- 
bably derived  from  the  Latin  simus,  Greek  o-'/iJ--,  'flat  or  snub 
nosed.'  2.  Fuirow  below  nose  in  upper  lip,  often  persisting 
noticeably  in  adults,  but  very  marked  in  babies  and  young 
children  (relic  of  a  divided  lip  lower  down  in  the  animal  scale), 
more  noticeable  in  the  ieaiurs  than  the  platyrrhine  monkeys, 
and  seemingly  not  present  in  the  catarrhines.  3.  Pouch-like 
cheeks  of  baby  (well  seen  in  the  cherubs  of  art),  recalling  the 
food-pouches  of  the  Cercopithecus.  4.  Rudimentary  tail  and 
depression  (so  hard  to  wash  in  children)  at  base  of  vertebral 
column, — '  the  tail  used  to  protrude  there  once  '  (compare  the 
large  tail-mark  in  the  adult  gorilla).  5.  The  greater  develop 
ment  of  arms  than  legs  (adapted  for  sustaining  the  body  and 
for  swinging).  6.  Practical  nonuse  of  thumb  (monkeys  use  it 
very  little).     7.  Movements  and  use   of  foot.     8.  Growth  of 

16 


228  THE   CHILD 

hair  on  child's  head  from  crown  to  forehead,  as  in  Ccbus 
vellerosus  (in  a  flow  of  rain  the  head  hung  down  and  like 
motions  encouraged  the  growth  of  the  hair  in  that  particular 
way).  9.  Direction  of  hairs  on  arms  (' rain-thatch').  Dr  J.  O. 
Quantz,  in  his  essay  on  '  Dendro-Psychoses,'  gives  a  summary  of 
the  arguments  favouring  the  arboreal  ancestry  of  man,  and  Dr 
Mumford,  in  his  '  Survival  Movements  of  Human  Infancy,' 
traverses  some  of  the  same  ground. 

In  his  study  of  'Some  Aspects  of  the  Early  Sense  of  Self,' 
President  G.  Stanley  Hall  enumerates  the  following  atavistic 
or  pseudo-atavistic  peculiarities  in  very  young  children : — 

1.  Finger-movements  resembling,  on  the  one  hand,  the 
counting  and  tallying  methods  of  primitive  man,  and,  on  the 
other,  the  recrudescence  of  these  in  arithmomania. 

2.  Clutching  and  clinging  with  convulsive  intensity  to  the 
hair  or  beard  of  adults,  suggesting  '  the  obvious  atavistic  rela- 
tion to  the  necessity  for  anthropoids  of  arboreal  habits  to  cling 
to  the  shaggy  sides  of  their  parents.' 

3.  Marked  tendency  to  pull  out  their  hair,  'as  if  by  some 
trace  of  the  atavistic  instinct  which  has  caused  the  depilation 
of  the  human  body.' 

4.  Biting  their  own  flesh  or  the  flesh  of  others,  their  toys, 
etc.,  in  anger,  suggesting  '  that  along  with  the  teeth  there  is  also 
growing  the  strong  psychic  disposition  to  use  them  as  primitive 
animals  do  theirs.' 

5.  Acts  connected  with  the  excretions  of  bladder  and  bowels, 
suggesting  '  many  scatological  rites  of  savages.' 

6.  The  persistent  denudation  and  stripping  off  of  clothing 
— '  morbid  and  atavistic' 

7.  Fear  of  strangers,  especially  those  with  too  unusual 
dress,  features,  acts,  etc. — '  owing,  perhaps,  to  some  reverbera- 
tions of  the  ancient  war  of  all  against  all  in  the  long  and  bitter 
struggle  for  existence.' 

Among  the  movements  noted  by  Mr  Buckman  as  evidences 
of  the  anthropoid  ancestry  of  man,  as  atavisms  in  the  human 
child,  are  the  following  : — 

I.  In  grasping,  e.g.,  a  glass  or  a  flower-pot,  the  infant  (not 
using  the  thumb)  seizes  the  rim  between  the  fingers  and  palm. 
2.  Ability  to  twist  the  sole  of  the  foot  sideways  in  a  straight 
line  with  the  inner  part  of  the  leg  (characteristic  of  a  tree- 
climbing  animal).  3.  Wonderful  power  of  movement  of  toes 
together  or  apart,     4.  Prehensile  power  of  toes.     5.  Predilec- 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE   PAST        229 

tion  for  rocking  in  cradle  and  similar  movements  (reflex  of 
swaying  to  and  fro  of  tree-branches).  6.  Climbing  instinct  of 
boys,  and  '  the  insane  desire  to  climb  upstairs,'  so  common  in 
young  children.  7.  Bow-leggedness  of  children  learning  to 
walk  (advantageous  position  for  tree-climbing),  with  this  may 
be  connected  '  the  ease  with  which  bicycle-children  get  bow- 
legged.'  8.  When  child  first  stands  up  the  outer  part  of  the 
foot  is  put  on  the  ground,  the  toes  turned  in,  heel  not  touching 
the  ground  (heels  of  monkeys  do  not  touch  branch  in  walking, 
etc.).  9.  'Sitting  on  heels.'  10.  Instinctive  stealing  and 
seizing  things.  11.  '  Taking  things  to  bed,' — with  some  young 
children  the  bed  is  a  sort  of  museum.  12.  Putting  between 
legs  articles  which  are  sought  to  be  taken  away  by  others  (a 
monkey  habit).  13.  Picking  at  anything  loose,  ^.^.,  wall-paper, 
to  tear  it  off,  'survival  of  bark-picking  in  search  of  insects.' 
14.  Picking  parasites  off  one  another.  15.  Fondness  of 
children  for  rolling  (ancestors  got  rid  of  parasites  in  that 
way).  16.  Scratching  of  head  (monkeys  notoriously  infected 
with  parasites).  17.  Thumb-sucking  in  childhood,  pencil- 
sucking  in  later  life  (also  cane-sucking  of  'dudes'  and 
'mashers'),  and  sucking  of  various  objects  by  adults  of  one 
or  of  both  sexes  (monkeys'  food  is  largely  of  a  nature  to  en- 
courage sucking).  18.  Exposure  of  canine  teeth  in  anger,  etc. 
(monkey  ancestors  fought  with  one  another).  19.  Instinctive 
fear-movements  at  sight  of  snakes  (snakes  are  the  great  enemy 
of  monkey  young).  20.  Mobility  of  facial  expression.  21. 
Movements  of  nose  and  nostrils.  22.  Elevation  of  eyebrows 
and  like  gestures. 

The  'clinging  power'  of  infants  was  discussed  in  1891  by 
Dr  Louis  Robinson,  in  his  article  '  Darwinism  in  the  Nursery.' 
Dr  Robinson  found  that  of  sixty  children  less  than  one  hour  old, 
all  but  two  were  able  to  sustain  the  whole  weight  of  the  body 
at  least  ten  seconds,  while  twelve  held  on  for  half  a  minute,  and 
three  or  four  for  nearly  a  whole  minute — nearly  all  at  the  age 
of  four  days  being  able  to  hold  themselves  suspended  for  halt 
a  minute.  When  two  or  three  weeks  old,  children  showed  a 
maximum  clinging  power  (one  and  a  half  minutes,  two  minutes, 
two  minutes  and  thirty-five  seconds — the  last  in  the  case  of  a 
child  three  weeks  old).  It  was  also  noted  that  one  child,  who 
had  let  go  with  his  right  hand,  continued  to  sustain  his  weight 
with  the  left  alone  for  five  seconds.  In  the  opinion  of  Dr 
Robinson,  Dr  Quantz,  and  other  recent  observers  and  writers, 
this  seemingly  purposeless  possession  of  extraordinary  strength 


230  THE   CIIir.D 

in  infants  'goes  to  show  that  our  ancestors  were  tree-dwellers, 
and  that  the  children  clung  to  their  mothers  whose  hands  were 
occupied  in  climbing  from  branch  to  branch.  Young  apes,  as 
a  rule,  hang  beneath  their  mothers,  holding  on  by  the  long 
hairs  of  their  shoulders  and  sides.  Those  that  failed  to  do  tliis 
would  tumble  to  the  ground  or  be  left  behind,  and  fall  a  prey 
to  enemies  from  which  the  mothers  were  fleeing.  Hence, 
natural  selection  would  bring  about  a  high  degree  of  this 
clinging  power'  (452). 

These  writers  point  out  also  that  '  the  refle.x  act  of  grasping 
an  object  which  touches  the  palm  can  be  of  no  value  to  the 
child  now,  except  to  point  to  a  former  period  when  life  itself  de- 
pended upon  it ' ;  that  predominant  hand-use  by  man's  arboreal 
ancestor  is  indicated  by  'the  child's  employment  of  only  its 
hands  in  the  first  stages  of  creeping,  while  the  feet  are  dragged 
behind ' ;  that  the  child's  method  of  grasping  an  object,  taking 
it  between  fingers  and  palm,  not  putting  the  thumb  on  the 
opposite  side,  recalls  the  fact  that  man's  arboreal  ancestors  in 
going  from  bough  to  bough  would  strike  the  branches  palm 
first  from  above  downward,  grasping  with  the  fingers ' ;  that 
the  frequent  inability  of  children  under  six  or  seven  years  of 
age  '  to  extend  the  hand  perfectly  straight '  is  a  result  of '  thou- 
sands of  years  of  bough-grasping.' 

In  connection  with  Dr  Robinson's  observations,  M.  J. 
Vallot^  maintains  that  there  is  often  a  difference  between 
children  and  monkeys  in  the  manner  in  which  they  support 
their  weight  by  the  strength  of  arms  and  fingers:  'Children 
seize  the  (jranch  to  which  they  cling  by  applying  the  thumb  to 
the  index  finger,  while  monkeys  apply  it  on  the  other  side,  so 
as  to  hold  the  branch  completely  between  the  thumb  and  the 
other  fingers.  This  manner  of  holding  oneself  suspended 
without  opposing  the  thumb  persists  in  man,  and  it  is  in  this 
fashion  that  all  children  suspend  themselves  when  learning 
gymnastics  until  the  teacher  has  taught  them  the  opposition 
of  the  thumb.' 

The  fact  that  in  man  (and  not  in  monkeys)  there  is  a  con- 
stant curve  of  the  fingers,  the  second  and  third  phalanges 
presenting  always  a  slight  incurvation ;  the  second  finger 
curves  laterally  toward  the  third,  the  fourth  and  fifth  toward 
the  third,  and  the  third  towards  the  fourth,  is  explained  by 
Regnault  ^  as  a  result  of  the  different  roles  of  the  fingers  in 
prehension  with  the  monkeys  and  with  man,  and  to  the  limited 
1  Rev.  Scieuf.,  XLIX.  p.  348.  -  Rev.  Scient.,  1894. 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE   PAST         23 1 

opposition  of  the  thumb  in  the  anthropoids,  the  monkeys' 
narrower  hand  also  favouring  the  process. 

As  'psychic  reverberations  '  from  the  arboreal  life  of  man's 
anthropoid  ancestor,  Dr  Quantz  enumerates,  among  others, 
the  following  (516,  p.  461)  :  i.  Instinctive  fear  of  snakes  and 
certain  wild  animals  (the  serpent,  e.^.,  can  climb  trees).  2. 
Instinctive  fear  of  lightning  (some  of  this  may  be  due  to  ex- 
perience of  ages  past — lightning  being  more  liable  to  strike  a 
tree  than  an  open  space).  3.  Fear  of  high  winds  and  other 
weather  disturbances  (especially  dangerous  to  tree-dwellers).  4. 
Instinctive  fear  of  falling  (in  arboreal  life  climbing  and  falling 
were  daily  experiences).  5.  Fear  of  strangers, 'hide  and  seek,' 
— these  are  of  use  in  arboreal  existence,  where  enemies  are 
numerous  and  active.  6.  '  Rocking  to  sleep  '  and  the  lullabies 
connected  with  it  are  reminiscent  of  '  long  ages  of  swaying  in 
the  branches  of  trees,  which  would  be  the  natural  accompani- 
ment of  sleep,  with  creatures  of  arboreal  habits.'  7.  The 
extreme  restlessness,  spontaneity  of  movement,  instinct  for 
imitation,  etc.,  of  children  resemble  those  of  monkeys  very 
much.  8.  The  physiognomy  and  actions  of  certain  idiots  and 
semi-idiots,  '  very  ape  like.'  9.  The  widespread  occurrence 
and  persistence  of  'tree-worship,'  and  the  great  ro/e  played  by 
trees  in  religion,  mythology,  philosophy,  art,  etc.,  all  over  the 
world,  and  in  the  thoughts  of  children. 

Atavisjns  of  the  Cave. — In  his  sketch  of  the  '  Primitive  Child' 
(541),  Dr  Louis  Robinson  seeks  to  explain  many  of  the 
physical  and  mental  peculiarities  of  the  infant  of  to-day  from 
the  inheritance  of  trials  and  characteristics  developed  under 
the  stress  of  the  environment  of  primitive  life.  Among  these 
are :  The  rotundity  of  outline  almost  universal  in  very  young 
children — young  monkeys  had  to  be  rather  spare  so  that  their 
mothers  might  carry  them  easily  about  the  trees;  the  human 
child  waxed  fat  in  times  of  plenty,  when  food  was  abundant 
(so  that  when  food  was  scarce  and  the  parents  grudged  to  their 
offspring  the  latter  might  live  on),  hence  the  voracity  of  the 
child  (and  its  tendency  to  pick  up  everything  and  put  it  into 
the  mouth — in  earlier  times  the  child  had  to  get  along  with 
the  debris  of  food  on  the  floor  of  the  cave  and  around  the 
resting-places) ;  infantile  beauty,  for  in  times  of  trouble  and  in 
flight  the  best-looking  children  would  be  snatched  up  and 
carried  away;  the  'astonishing  vocal  capabilities'  of  the 
modern  infant,  since  it  is  a  well-known  fact  that  'all  young 
creatures,  unless  hungry,  will  remain  silent  for  hours,'  and,  as 


232  THE   CHILD 

a  matter  of  self-preservation,  the  infant  luiman  learned  to  cry 
and  to  howl,  for  purposes  of  food,  and  to  prevent  being  over- 
looked. Moreover,  in  primitive  times,  the  sciuealing  of  infants 
(like  the  barking  of  dogs  to-day)  contributed  to  vigilance  on 
the  part  of  the  primitive  community.  Fear  of  strangers,  terror 
of  wild  beasts,  fear  of  the  dark,  jealousy  (the  primitive  child 
had  often  a  very  hard  time  to  get  anything  to  eat),  and 
many  other  peculiarities  of  the  modern  child  had  their  origin 
in  the  facts  and  necessities  of  the  environment  of  the  earliest 
men — indeed,  Dr  Robinson  holds  that  '  every  trait,  physical 
or  moral,'  of  the  young  human  being  can  be  traced  back  to  its 
forerunner  in  the  offspring  of  cave-man,  and  his  immediate 
successors  or  predecessors,  a  statement  which  is  perhaps  more 
of  a  truism  than  an  exaggeration. 

Interesting  in  connection  with  Robinson's  views  is  Dr  R. 
W.  Shufeldt's  account  of  the  actions  of  a  Navaho  Indian  child 
'  not  over  ten  months  old,'  at  Fort  Wingate,  New  Mexico,  whom 
he  sought  to  photograph.  The  way  in  which  the  infant 
'watched  every  movement,'  without  a  cry,  hid  behind  the 
sage-bushes,  peered  through  the  leafless  twigs,  crouched  down, 
'looked,  for  all  the  world,  the  young  Indian  cub  at  bay,  with 
all  the  native  instincts  of  his  ancestors  on  the  alert,  and  making 
use  of  all  the  stratagem  his  baby  mind  could  master,'  ran  from 
bush  to  bush  ('  taking  advantage  of  everything  that  lay  in  the 
short  intervening  distance '),  and  finally  '  stood  up  to  the  full 
extent  of  its  baby  height,  and  giving  vent  to  a  genuine  infantile 
bawl,  made  a  break  for  the  final  point  of  its  destination,'  is 
very  suggestive.  Dr  Shufeldt  arrives  at  the  conclusion  that : 
'  The  native  instincts  of  these  American  Indians  are  exhibited 
in  their  young  at  a  wonderfully  tender  age ;  and  in  this  par- 
ticular they  differ  vastly  from  our  own  children  at  a  corre- 
sponding time  of  life,  and,  reared  as  they  have  been  for  ages, 
in  a  civilised  environment'  (592).  We  lack,  however,  reliable 
studies  on  this  point. 

Dr  Frank  Baker,  in  his  vice-presidential  address  before  the 
Anthropological  Section  of  the  American  Association  for  the 
Advancement  of  Science,  on  '  The  Ascent  of  Man,'  enumerates 
some  of  the  evidences  of  progress  the  body  of  man  contains  in 
itself,  'indications  of  the  pathway  by  which  humanity  has 
climbed  from  darkness  to  light,  from  bestiality  to  civilisation, 
relics  of  countless  ages  of  struggle,  often  fierce,  bloody,  and 
pitiless'  (21,  p.  299).  Some  few  of  the  changes  and  variations 
incident  to  man's  upward  climb  from  quadruped  to  man  are 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE   PAST 


233 


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234  THE   CHILD 

Some  of  the  effects  of  the  rearrangement  of  man's  body 
and  its  organs  consequent  upon  the  assumption  of  the  erect 
posture,  as  given  by  Baker,  are  grouped  below  : — 

Vascular  System. — Evidence  of  prior  adaptation  to  quadru- 
pedal position — {a)  several  great  trunks  {e.g.,  great  vessels  of 
the  thigh,  forearm,  ventral  wall)  are  comparatively  exposed. 
In  an  animal  '  it  is  scarcely  possible  to  injure  a  vessel  of  any 
great  size  without  deeply  penetrating  the  body,  or  passing 
quite  through  a  limb  ' ;  this  is  because,  '  by  constant  selection 
for  enormous  periods  of  time,  the  vessels  have  become  located 
in  the  best  protected  situations  ' ;  {b)  The  vertical  position  of 
man  does  not,  as  does  the  horizontal,  '  favour  the  easy  flow  of 
blood  to  the  heart  without  too  greatly  accelerating  it,' — the 
valves  of  the  veins  are  arranged  for  a  quadrupedal  position.' 
As  a  result  of  the  assumption  of  the  vertical  posture  by  man, 
we  have,  connected  with  his  vascular  system,  congestion  of  the 
liver,  cardiac  dropsy,  tendency  to  fainting  or  syncope  with 
lessened  heart-action,  varicose  veins,  varicocele,  haemorrhoids, 
etc. 

Viscera. — {a)  The  liver  in  man  depends  more  and  more 
from  the  diaphragm,  not  hanging  suspended  from  the  spine  as 
in  quadrupeds,  and  the  diaphragmatic  connections  in  man  are 
such  that  the  '  liver  hangs  in  effect  suspended  from  the  top  of 
the  thorax  and  the  base  of  the  skull ' ;  {b)  the  gall  bladder  in 
man  and  the  urinary  bladder  are  less  advantageously  situated 
for  discharge;  {c)  in  man  the  coecum,  with  its  vermiform  ap- 
pendix, is  not,  as  in  the  quadrupeds,  so  placed  '  that  the  action 
of  gravity  tends  to  free  it  from  foical  accumulations' ;  (d)  the 
ascending  colon  is  '  obliged  to  lift  its  contents  against  gravity ' 
in  man.  As  results  of  the  assumption  of  the  erect  posture, 
we  have  here :  Calculus  and  bladder  diseases,  appendicitis, 
torpidity  (with  a  lowered  state  of  the  system)  of  function  in 
the  colon,  gall-stones,  restricted  diaphragmatic  and  pulmonary 
action,  imperfect  aeration  of  the  blood,  etc. 

Pelvis. — {a)  In  quadrupeds  the  pelvis  is  suspended  from 
the  horizontal  spine  by  means  of  a  strong  elastic  suspensory 
bandage  of  fascia,  the  tunica  abdomiualis,  of  which  in  man  the 
part  near  the  thorax,  being  useless,  has  'entirely  disappeared,' 
while  '  in  the  groin  it  remains  to  strengthen  the  weak  points 
where  structures  pass  out  from  the  abdominal  cavity ' ;  {b)  in 
the  animals  there  is  no  such  great  distinction  between  the  male 
and  female  pelvis  as  exists  in  the  human  being,  for,  in  the 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE   PAST        235 

quadruped,  '  the  act  of  parturition  is  comparatively  easy,  the 
pelvis  offering  no  serious  hindrance,'  while  in  the  human  female 
'  the  shape  of  the  pelvis  is  the  result  of  a  compromise  between 
two  forms — one  for  support,  the  other  for  ease  in  delivery' — 
thus  the  human  pelvis  has  become  more  fixed  and  dish-like  in 
shape,  being  most  characteristic  in  woman,  where  it  '  must 
bear  the  additional  weight  of  the  pregnant  uterus.'  As  results 
of  the  assumption  of  the  erect  posture,  we  have  here :  Hernia, 
uterine  displacement,  etc.,  deaths  in  child-birth  (the  size  of  the 
head  has  gradually  increased) ;  woman  has  suffered  from  these 
peculiarities  much  more  than  man. 

Muscular  Anomalies.  — T^xo.  muscular  anomalies  of  the 
human  body — in  the  human  foetus  and  in  the  child  at  birth 
there  are  very  many  anomalies  of  this  sort  which  have  almost 
or  completely  disappeared  in  adult  age — have  been  recently 
studied  in  great  detail  by  Le  Double  and  Testut.  The  latter 
holds  that  every  abnormal  disposition  of  muscle  in  man  '  cor- 
responds, perfectly  or  imperfectly,  to  a  disposition  which  was 
normal  somewhere  in  the  zoological  series ' — the  carnivora,  the 
rodentia,  the  edentates,  the  didelphians,  even  the  lower  verte- 
brates, etc.  Among  other  curious  facts,  Testut  notes  that 
feeble  individuals  with  delicate  muscles  and  bones  seem  to 
present  about  as  many  anomalies  as  those  possessing  a  strong 
skeletal  and  a  vigorous  muscular  system.  Le  Double,  who 
does  not  hold  the  atavistic  theory  of  Testut,  distinguishes  from 
the  atavistic,  regressive,  or  theromorphic  anomalies,  those  that 
are  progressive  or  evolutive,  and  those  that  are  merely  mon- 
strosities or  decidedly  pathological.  In  man,  the  member  or 
part  most  modified  (the  hand,  as  compared  with  the  shoulder) 
appears  to  offer  the  most  anomalies  of  muscular  tissue.  It  is 
in  the  discussion  of  man's  muscular  system  that  the  theory  of 
atavism  has  been  most  misused.  As  Dr  Frank  Baker  remarks 
(593,  p.  127)  :  'When  Sutton  suggests  that  the  round  ligament 
of  the  hip-joint  is  a  survival  of  an  insertion  of  a  muscle  found 
only  in  the  lizards,  and  Waldeyer  considers  that  certain  fibres 
of  the  ciliary  muscle  are  vestiges  of  the  Cramptonian  muscle  of 
birds,  it  seems  to  me  that  those  eminent  authorities  forgot  the 
extreme  improbability  of  genetic  continuation  of  structures 
between  such  widely  different  stocks,  and  through  such  in- 
numerable generations,  they  having,  nevertheless,  totally  dis- 
appeared in  intervening  forms.' 

The  Erect  Position  in  the  Animal  Series. — Bipedal  locomo- 


236  THE   CHILD 

tion  is  not  man's  unique  possession,  for  birds  have  it,  monkeys 
approach  it,  and  some  reptiles,  on  certain  occasions,  use  it 
almost  to  perfection.  What  Mr  Saville-Kent  regards  as  a  most 
interesting  case  of  the  cropping  out  in  the  young  of  ancestral 
traits  is  seen  in  the  bipedal  locomotion — more  manifest  in 
young  and  slender  individuals  —  of  certain  Australian  and 
African  lizards,  who  run  across  wide  expanses  of  level  and 
smooth  ground  to  the  nearest  water  in  bipedal  fashion.  This 
peculiarity,  the  author  suggests,  '  is  inherited  from  a  race  that 
possessed  yet  more  essentially  bipedal  progression.'^  The 
bipedal  progression  of  the  Australian  lizard,  observed  also  by 
M.  de  Vis,  has  led  Madame  Clemence  Royer  to  deny  the 
generally  accepted  genealogy  of  man  through  some  form  of 
anthropoid  ape,  tracing  man  and  the  apes  of  to-day  back  to 
pelagic  forms  of  parallel  but  distinct  development.  An  original 
difference  of  attitude  led  to  man's  upright  and  the  ape's 
oblique  position,  while  neither  man  nor  ape  has  passed  through 
a  line  of  terrestrial  ancestors  who  used  the  horizontal  position. 
Both  the  pedestrian  motion  of  man  and  the  arboreal  life  of  the 
anthropoids  are  sui  generis,  and  their  common  origins  take  us 
back  to  the  movements  and  adaptations  of  sea-life.  It  must  not 
be  forgotten  that  the  lizards  noted  by  Mr  Saville-Kent  'possess 
a  relatively  excessive  development  of  the  hind  limbs,'  and  that 
the  faculty  of  bipedal  locomotion  is  most  conspicuously  pre- 
sent in  the  young  and  slender  individuals ' — here,  again,  the 
young,  whatever  may  be  the  reason,  is  father  of  the  old. 

Bertaux,  in  his  study  of  the  humerus  and  the  femur,  con- 
cludes that  the  upper  limb  of  man  is  no  more  typical  than  the 
lower,  and  the  so-called  torsion  of  the  humerus  is  a  phenomena 
of  adaptation,  that  organ  being  not  at  all  a  '  turned '  femur. 
He  emphasises  the  fact  that,  while  in  the  monkeys  all  four 
limbs  are  more  or  less  adapted  to  prehension,  in  man  the 
difference  of  the  two  pairs  of  limbs  is  complete — two  for  pre- 
hension and  two  for  standing  and  walking.  Bertaux  rejects 
the  simian  origin  of  man,  preferring  to  derive  him  from  the 
Eocene  mammifers — Phenacodus  primcevus—^hos^e  anterior 
members  were  adapted  for  prehension  and  sustentation,  the 
posterior  being  suited  to  walking  (51). 

Man  as  Biped. — Sir  William  Turner,  the  eminent  anatomist, 
after  discussing  in  detail  many  of  the  technical  questions 
involved,  comes  to  the  following  conclusion  concerning 
1  Nature,  LVI.  p.  271. 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE   PAST        237 

the  erect  attitude  of  man  (653,  p.  4):  'Characters  and 
pecuharities  which  appertain  not  only  to  the  family  of  which 
the  individual  is  a  member,  but  also  to  the  species  to  which 
he  belongs,  are  conveyed  through  it  [germ]  from  one  genera- 
tion to  another.  Hence,  as  the  capability  of  assuming  the 
erect  attitude  and  of  thus  standing  and  moving  on  two  feet 
have  been  attributes  of  the  human  form  since  the  beginning, 
there  can  be  little  doubt  that  this  power  is  potential  in  the 
human  organism  at  the  time  of  birth,  and  only  requires  a 
further  development  of  the  nervous  and  muscular  systems  to 
become  a  reality,  without  the  aid  of  any  special  training/  He 
also  observes  further,  in  deprecation  of  the  idea  that  to  the 
fostering  care  of  mother  or  nurse  is  due  the  assumption  of  the 
erect  attitude  by  the  young  child :  '  If  one  could  conceive  an 
infant  so  circumstanced  that,  though  duly  provided  with  food 
fitted  for  its  nutrition  and  growth,  it  should  never  receive  any  aid 
or  instruction  in  its  mode  or  progression,  there  can,  I  think, 
be  little  doubt  that,  when  it  had  gained  sufficient  strength,  it 
would,  of  itself,  acquire  the  erect  attitude.  The  great  growth 
in  length  of  the  lower  limbs,  as  compared  with  the  upper, 
would  render  it  inconvenient  to  retain  the  creeping  or  the 
quadrupedal  position.'  Somewhat  the  same  view  is  taken  by 
Professor  E.  A.  Kirkpatrick,^  who  holds  that  '  movements  such 
as  walking,  that  seem  to  be  learned,  are,  in  reality,  largely 
inherited,  and  that  other  nervous  and  muscular  connections 
are  less  a  matter  of  experience  than  is  usually  thought.'  In 
support  of  his  contention  Professor  Kirkpatrick  cites  the  case 
of  a  seventeen  months'  old  child,  '  that  had  never  tried  to 
stand  or  walk  alone,  who,  upon  seeing  some  cuffs  on  a  table, 
crawled  to  it,  pulled  herself  up,  put  on  the  cuffs,  then  walked 
and  ran  all  over  the  house.' 

Origin  of  Erect  Posture. — Dr  Quantz  (516,  p.  455),  citing 
Winwood  Reade's  statement  that  '  when  the  gorilla  wishes  to 
see  more  distinctly  the  approaching  hunter,  he  rises  to  the 
upright  position,'  and  noting  the  fact  that  not  a  few  animals 
{e.g.^  monkeys,  rabbits,  etc.)  also  stand  up  to  look  at  distant 
objects,  concludes  that  'the  erect  posture  has  been  brought 
about  chiefly  perhaps  through  curiosity.'  Quantz  holds,  with 
Drummond,  that  the  erect  attitude  is  a  comparatively  recent 
acquisition  of  man,  as  is  proved  by  his  inability  to  maintain  it 
comfortably  for  any  great  length  of  time,  his  desire  to  rest  by 

1  Psychol.  Rev.,  VI.  p.  153. 


238  THE   CHILD 

sitting,  and  his  even  yet  somewhat  unstable  equilibrium,  his 
inability  to  stand  when  sick,  etc.,  and,  further,  by  the  fact  of  the 
child's  having  to  learn  to  walk,  a  thing  which  other  creatures 
do  at  once  (516,  p.  456).  But,  as  the  author  notes,  the 
'  bipedal  balancing  '  is  the  difficult  thing,  for  children  make  '  the 
alternate  movements  of  the  legs  long  before  such  a  movement 
is  of  any  service,'  just  as  the  arms  of  a  child  make  alternate 
movements  when  gently  stimulated  on  the  palms— these,  the 
movements  necessary  to  quadrupedal  locomotion,  seem  to  be 
inherited,  but  the  bipedal  gait  is  acquired  by  practice  of  the 
individual,  not  having  as  yet  become  instinctive. 

Baker,  however,  in  his  discussion  of  the  evidence  as  to  the 
nature  and  characteristics  of  'Primitive  Man'  (22,  p.  365), 
concludes,  from  consideration  of  the  remains  of  the  Fiihecan- 
thropus  crectm  (a  creature  believed  to  be  a  type  intermediate 
between  man  and  his  anthropoidal  ancestors),  that  in  all 
probability  '  the  erect  posture  was  assumed  much  earlier  than 
is  commonly  supposed.'  Further,  he  thinks:  'It  must  have 
preceded  the  intellectual  development,  and  perhaps  have  been 
one  of  the  conditions  that  led  to  it.  It  is  not  until  the  erect 
posture  is  assumed  that  the  thoracic  limbs  are  freed  from  the 
duty  of  assisting  in  locomotion,  and  thus  become  adapted  to 
higher  uses.  No  animal  that  habitually  walked  on  its  hands  could 
acquire  the  use  of  tools.'  In  a  sense  the  brain  has  been  shaped 
by  the  activities  of  the  body,  and  there  is  much  truth  in  Dr 
Baker's  observation  :  '  The  infant  does  not  learn  to  walk  because 
its  brain  teaches  it  to  do  so,  but  by  experience  and  trial  its 
hands  and  feet  teach  its  brain  that  this  is  a  more  effective 
method  of  locomotion  ;  in  this,  as  in  so  many  other  instances, 
the  history  of  the  infant  recapitulates  that  of  the  race.' 

The  view  that  the  oncoming  of  severe  cold  in  the  northern 
hemisphere  changed  some  arboreal  anthropoid  into  the  pre- 
cursor of  man  has  been  put  forward  by  several  writers.  A 
glacial  period  of  some  sort  figures  conspicuously  in  the  past 
environments  of  human  and  animal  species,  according  to  many 
authorities.  Grant  Allen,  who  holds  that  'the  tropics  now 
preserve  the  general  features  and  aspect  of  earlier  times,' 
insists  on  the  far-reaching  effects  of  the  ancient  cold-wave.^ 
Then  it  was  that  the  trees  learned  to  shed  their  leaves,  the 
birds  to  migrate,  the  insects  to  hibernate  in  egg  and  cocoon, 
the  pigs  to  fatten  against  the  frozen  time,  the  moles  to  sleep 
over  winter,  the  squirrels  to  hoard  nuts,  the  frogs  to  go  into 
1  Pop.  Sci.  Mo.,  Dec.  1898. 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE   PAST         239 

the  warmer  mud,  the  adders  to  coil  up  to  sleep,  etc.  Man, 
however,  he  believes,  is  of  '  pre-glacial '  origin  subsequent  to  the 
old  '  frozen  time.'  Haacke  would  have  it  that  after  the  origin 
of  warm-blooded  animals,  through  the  transformation  of  some 
reptile  or  amphibian — the  first  step  towards  the  mammal — a 
glacial  period  caused  these  to  assume  a  hairy  coat,  which 
most  of  their  descendants  still  retain  (202,  p.  10). 

In  his  book  on  the  origin  and  home  of  primitive  man,  Dr 
J.  Miiller  adopts  and  extends  Wagner's  theory  of  the  coming 
of  man.  According  to  these  writers,  the  rise  from  animal  to 
human  life  really  took  place  in  the  northern  part  of  the  Old 
World  during  the  Ice  Age.  The  anthropoid  ancestor  of  man, 
on  account  of  the  lack  of  plant  and  fruit  food  caused  by  the 
glacial  cold,  left  the  trees,  took  to  the  plains  and  began  eating 
flesh.  Gradually  he  learned  to  hunt,  and  his  practice  in 
hurling  stones  led  ultimately  to  the  assumption  of  the  upright 
position  and  walking  on  the  hind-limbs  only.  He  was,  how- 
ever, helpless  in  many  respects  until  he  succeeded  in  manu- 
facturing artificial  weapons,  which  assured  to  him  the  conquest 
of  the  rest  of  the  animal  world.  Some  such  theory  as  this 
seems  also  to  be  entertained  by  Keane. 

Professor  O.  T.  Mason,  who  has  published  a  thorough- 
going study  of  '  Primitive  Travel  and  Transportation,'  observes 
that  man  is  the  only  animal  which  'has  succeeded  in  divesting 
the  fore -limbs  altogether  of  their  primary  function,'  and  in 
providing  'in  the  erect  position  the  diversified  requisites  for 
the  versatile  walker  and  burden-bearer  in  one  person.'  In  a 
certain  sense,  we  may  say  that  '  the  erect  position  was  effected 
by  and  through  the  carrying  art'  (412,  p.  255).  Anyone  who 
has  watched  the  movements  of  a  little  child,  before  it  has 
learned  to  walk,  cannot  fail  to  have  noticed  the  delight  it 
takes  in  moving,  lifting,  carrying  things  with  its  hands  long 
before  it  has  attained  to  anything  like  the  erect  posture. 
ISIethods  of  carrying,  indeed,  have  much  to  do  still  with  the  exact 
character  of  the  erect  posture — women,  e.g.,  seem  almost  every- 
where to  prefer  'toting'  or  carrying  on  the  head,  men  incline 
to  the  use  of  the  shoulders  or  the  back.  Among  some  primitive 
peoples  (certain  North  American  Indian  tribes  in  particular), 
the  men  preserve  the  upright  figure  and  dignified  bearing  better 
than  the  women,  who,  through  carrying  children  and  numerous 
other  heavy  burdens,  soon  come  to  have  the  figure  stooped 
and  bent.     But  sometimes,   on  the  other  hand  (among  the 


240  THE   CHILD 

Quiche's  of  Guatemala,  for  example)  it  is  the  men  who  relieve 
the  back  pressure  by  a  band  around  the  forehead,  and  by 
bending  forward  to  contract  the  crouching  posture,  while 
the  women  have  a  dignilled  bearing  and  more  erect  position 
due  to  their  carrying  burdens  on  their  heads  and  on  the  out- 
stretched palm  of  the  uplifted  hand.  These  differing  customs, 
we  are  told,  begin  in  early  childhood,  and  have  an  undoubted 
influence  in  shaping  the  figures  of  adult  life  (412,  p.  477).  Many 
of  the  most  primitive  methods  and  devices  for  carrying  and 
transporting  still  exist  in  the  midst  of  our  modern  culture  as 
the  nursery,  the  farm  and  garden,  the  docks  and  wharves,  the 
streets  and  byways  amply  testify  (412,  p.  423).  Children  love 
to  ride  'pick-a-back'  as  of  old.  Women  persist  in  carrying 
their  purses  in  their  hands.  The  handkerchief  slung  on  the  end 
of  the  pole  still  met  with  in  the  pedlar  and  the  tramp  is  age-old. 
The  neck-yoke  for  carrying  survives  both  in  Old  and  New 
England,  and  the  country  boys  and  women  use  a  hoop  as  a 
spreader  when  carrying  two  pails  of  water,  while  the  two 
icemen  in  the  great  city  who  carry  a  huge  block  by  both 
holding  on  the  hooks  and  one  pushing  against  the  shoulder  of 
the  other  for  a  brace  likewise  belong  to  primitive  times. 
The  waiter  in  our  modern  hotels  who  elevates  the  dishes  he  is 
carrying  upon  the  palms  of  his  hands  had  a  fellow  in  Egypt 
thousands  of  years  ago.  The  co-operative  system  of  carrying 
in  evidence  at  barn-raisings  and  picnics,  shipyards  and  army 
manceuvres,  funerals  and  accidents  is  very  ancient.  The 
passage  of  buckets  of  water  from  hand  to  hand  at  a  fire  still  to 
be  seen  even  in  civilised  English-speaking  communities,  the 
transport  of  fruit  and  other  merchandise  in  like  fashion  in  the 
Southern  States,  and  all  other  endless  chain  methods  of  trans- 
portation, find  congeners  in  Hawaii  and  among  the  ancient 
Picts.  The  Irish  milkmaid  who  crowns  her  head  with  her 
kerchief  or  a  cloth,  before  setting  her  pail  upon  it,  is  not  far 
from  the  Zuhi  Indian  with  her  carrying-pad.  The  device  of 
sitting  down  to  aid  in  receiving  or  adjusting  the  load  is  a 
familiar  one  to  many  primitive  peoples.  The  canoe  (and  with 
it  the  modern  steamship),  the  coffin,  the  cradle,  the  box  of  the 
waggon  and  sleigh  all  bear  to-day  traces  of  their  common 
parentage  in  the  hollowed  log,  the  primitive  'dug  out,'  which 
once  served  all  these  purposes.  The  '  stone  boat '  of  the 
Middle  and  Eastern  States  finds  its  almost  perfect  fellow 
among  the  sav:'.ge  tribes  of  Siberia.     The  rude  sleds  of  some 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE   PAST        24I 

of  our  children  to-day  are  matches  for  the  simpler  vehicles  of 
many  Arctic  and  sub-Arctic  peoples. 

J^ig/ii  and  Left. — The  assumption  of  the  erect  posture  by 
man,  according  to  Dr  D.  (].  Brinton,^  who  remarks  that  'the 
anthropoids  and  other  primates  closest  to  man  are  ambidex- 
trous,' and  that  'the  aboriginal  race  of  North  America  (and 
presumably  other  primitive  peoples  as  well)  was  either  left- 
handed  or  ambidextrous  to  a  greater  degree  than  the  peoples 
of  modern  Europe '  (among  educated  Americans  and  Europeans 
2  to  4  per  cent,  are  positively  left-handed),  entailed  the  pre- 
ference for  the  right  hand  noted  in  all  parts  of  the  world  from 
the  remotest  antiquity,  the  difference  in  the  distribution  of 
arterial  blood  to  the  left  brain  and  the  right,  occasioned  by  the 
new  attitude  being  the  immediate  cause.  But  this  is  only  one 
of  many  views  as  to  the  origin  of  right-handedness.  Pro- 
fessor Mason, 2  from  the  examination  of  stone  scrapers,  is  led 
to  conclude  that  '  quod  sciam,  no  savage  woman  was  ever  left- 
handed,'  a  fact  which  would  set  woman  in  advance  of  man  in 
even  the  most  primitive  times.  Right-handedness  and  left- 
handedness,  however,  may  be  only  one  aspect  of  the  general  field 
of  asymmetry  in  man,  however  originated.  Professor  J.  J.  van 
Biervliet,  indeed,  in  his  essay  'The  Right  Man  and  the  Left  Man,' 
based  on  extended  observations  and  a  survey  of  the  literature 
of  asymmetry  in  the  human  subject,  comes  to  the  conclusion 
that  '  the  normal  man  is  asymmetric,'  and  that  there  are  'two 
normal  types  of  this  asymmetry — skeleton,  muscular  system, 
nervous  system,  senses,  functions,  etc.,  are  all  affected — the 
right  man  and  the  left  man.'  In  the  case  of  the  '  right  man,' 
all  the  organs,  etc.,  on  the  right  side  of  the  body  are  better 
developed  than  those  on  the  left  in  the  proportion  of  10  to  9  ; 
with  the  '  left  man '  the  case  is  vice-versa.  Many  of  these 
differences  are  slightly  marked  or  do  not  occur  at  all  in  early 
childhood,  not  making  their  appearance  till  the  age  of  fourteen 
or  fifteen  (52,  p.  388),  and  the  asymmetry  in  question 
seems  not  directly  heritable.  Occasionally  there  are  cross- 
asymmetries. 

Dr  van  Biervliet  inclines  to  seek  the  origin  of  this 
asymmetry  in  the  facts  of  embryonal  life,  the  development  of 
the  vascular  system  especially.  The  '  famous  asymmetry,'  of 
the  criminal,  according  to  Dr  van  Biervliet,  loses  not  a  little 
of  its  importance  in  the  light  of  the  facts  adduced  by  him,  as 

■*  At?ier.  Aiifkr.,  IX.  p.  iSl.  ^  Anier.  An'hr.,  IX.  p.  226. 


242  THE   CHILD 

do  also  many  of  the  discussions  of  the  '  atavistic '  character  of 
left-handedness,  etc.,  for  the  normal  ''left  man,'  while  not 
nearly  so  numerous  as  the  normal  'right  man,'  is  remarkably 
frequent. 

According  to  M.  Irwcll,'  the  vocal  organs  of  man  and  the 
apes  are  so  similar  anatomically  that  some  special  cause  must 
exist  for  the  appearance  of  human  speech.  This,  he  thinks,  is 
correlated  with  the  erect  position  so  characteristic  of  man,  and 
with  his  breathing.  Articulate  language,  its  beauties  and  its 
blemishes  came  when  man  'stood  up.' 

Hand-use — Manual  Dexterity. — In  the  story  of  the  use  of 
the  hand  one  may  well  recognise  some  parallelism  between  the 
development  of  the  race  and  that  of  the  individual.  Good 
detailed  studies  of  the  use  of  the  hands  in  the  various  activities 
of  primitive  peoples  are  rare,  for  there  are  as  yet  few  Cushings, 
McGuires  and  other  patient  investigators  of  savage  and  bar- 
barous life. 

Mr  F.  H.  Gushing,  in  his  interesting  account  of  the  arrow 
and  the  activities  connected  with  it,  observes  :  '  There  are  three 
examples  of  the  way  in  which  awkward-handed,  experienceless- 
minded  beings  began  making  (or,  rather,  using)  things  as  tools. 
They  are  to  be  found  in  the  acts  of  monkeys,  imbeciles,  or  very 
young  children.  I  have  watched  and  experimented  with  all 
three  studiously  and  long.  If  they  would  break  a  thing,  they 
cannot — or  at  least  they  never  do — dissociate  the  thing  to  be 
broken  from  the  breaking  of  it.  They  hit  it  against  something 
bigger.'  Even  the  Tasmanians,  Mr  Gushing  points  out,  though 
far  above  the  monkey's  or  the  infant's  stage  of  art,  '  still  prac- 
tised edging  their  hard  pebble-choppers  by  seizing  them  with 
both  hands,  the  more  accurately  to  direct  them,  and  whacking 
them  until  chipped  sharp  obliquely  against  other  stones,  and 
in  this  they  were,  but  a  few  generations  ago,  in  the  true 
Palaeolithic  period  of  their  development.'  It  marked  a  mighty 
advance  in  the  intelligent  activity  of  man  when  he  changed 
from  a  mere  user  of  tools  to  a  maker  of  them — when  the  idea 
came  to  him  to  use  the  tool  on  he  object,  not  the  object  upon 
the  tool.  The  way  of  perfectibility  was  then  opened  for  the 
tool  and  for  all  actions  connected  therewith.  From  the  nut 
clasped  in  the  hand  and  struck  against  the  boulder  to  the 
implement  fashioned  to  best  suit  the  hand,  and  best  break, 
split,  cut  or  round  the  object  against  which  it  was  employed, 
'  Med.  Kcc,  N.Y.,  p.  S7. 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE   PAST         243 

was  a  step  that  marked  the  victory  of  intent  over  opportunity, 
of  art  over  materiahsm  of  the  rudest  sort. 

Mr  Gushing  tells  us  further  :  'There  are  three  contemporary 
examples  of  the  early  use  of  a  prod  as  a  weapon — of  at  least  the 
chase.  These  are :  Bobby  [monkey]  again,  young  children, 
and  (I  say  it  not  gracelessly)  women  trying  to  drive  chickens  or 
cattle  or  other  frightful  creatures.'  The  monkey  tries  to  hit  the 
cat,  e.^\,  with  a  stick, '  never  by  actually  throwing  it,  but  by  lurch- 
ing it  forward  with  both  hands,  and  as  much  with  the  body  as 
with  the  hands  and  arms.'  Moreover,  says  Mr  Gushing,  '  if  you 
ever  see  awkward  women  or  children  after  anything  with  a 
"  sharp  stick,"  you  will  observe  that  they  throw  it,  if  they  can- 
not catch  up,  in  much  the  same  fashion — lurchingly,  not  over- 
hand, as  a  spear  should  be  thrown,  for  that  would  discontinue 
the  initial  movement'  (139,  p.  328). 

The  epithet  '  two-handed,'  which  the  present  writer  remem- 
bers from  culldhood  as  a  synonym  for  '  awkward,'  finds  some 
explanation  in  these  primitive  modi  opei-ajidi.  Talbot  says  of 
a  family  reported  by  Gibney  (625,  p.  55) :  'AH'  [five]  'of  the 
children  and  the  grandchild  are  semi-ambidextrous  to  an  an- 
noying degree ;  all  of  the  movements  which  they  perform  with 
one  hand  are  simultaneously  performed  with  the  other  hand. 
The  girls  are  obliged  to  use  only  one  hand  when  dressing 
themselves,  or  when  cutting  patterns,  and  hold  the  other  hand 
down  by  their  side,  because  the  two  hands  perform  the  same 
movements  at  the  same  time,  and  would  interfere  with  each 
other.'  There  are  other  data  of  similar  import,  and  an 
interesting  essay  might  be  written  on  the  awkward  ambidex- 
terity of  human  individuals. 

Mr  J.  D.  McGuire,  the  author  of  several  excellent  studies 
of  the  arts  of  primitive  peoples,  controlled  by  experimental 
investigations,  observes  that  it  is  only  in  rare  instances  that  a 
long  period  of  time  could  be  devoted  by  savages  under  the 
stress  of  the  exigencies  of  life  to  the  completion  of  any  article 
intended  only  for  luxury  or  adornment,  and  that '  it  is  a  safe  rule 
to  assume  that  no  savage  instrument  ever  required  any  consider- 
able time  to  complete  '  (388,  p.  670).  The  chief  thing  was  to 
begin  in  the  right  way.  Mr  McGuire  holds  strongly  the  view  that 
primitive  implements  and  primitive  artefacts  were  produced  by 
primitive  methods,  and  not  by  means  of  any  wonderful  '  lost 
arts  '  and  contrivances  beyond  the  comprehension  and  skill  of 
man  to-day  :  '  If  the  tusks,  teeth  and  "  batons  of  command  " 


244  T^JE   CHILD 

of  tlie  caves '  [due  to  Quaternary  man  of  the  Palaeolithic  period 
in  Western  Europe]  '  are  of  the  pure  Stone  Age,  as  they  un- 
doubtedly appear  to  be,  one  may  argue  safely  that  primitive 
implements  were  employed  in  making  them,  unless  it  can 
be  shown  that  primitive  methods  would  not  accomplish  the 
work '  (388,  p.  626).  Experimental  research  enables  the  author 
to  state  further :  '  The  habit  of  attributing  great  patience  and 
indomitable  will  to  savages  who  have  performed  some  work 
which  does  not  at  first  sight  appear  explicable  by  simple 
methods  is  due  rather  to  poetic  fancy  than  to  a  willingness  to 
admit  ignorance.' 

Most  interesting  in  this  connection  is  Mr  F.  H.  Cushing's 
account  of  his  discovery  of  arrow-making ;  how  as  a  boy  of 
about  fourteen  he  had  experimentally  learned  how  the  Indian 
arrowheads  and  the  implements  employed  in  fashioning  them 
were  made  and  used,  and  '  had  elaborated,  from  the  simple 
beginning  1  have  chronicled  here,  some  seven  or  eight  totally 
distinct  methods  of  working  flint-like  substances  with  Stone 
Age  apparatus,  and  subsequently  found  that  all  save  two  of 
these  processes  were  absolutely  similar  to  processes  now  known 
to  have  been  some  time  in  vogue  with  one  people  or  another 
of  the  ancient  world,  and  1  confidently  look  to  finding  that 
the  other  two,  and  yet  additional  methods  since  experi- 
mentally made  out,  were  somewhere  followed  by  men  before 
^^'  (i39>  P-  313)-  ^^^  Cushing's  success  (by  reason  of 
which  he  became  an  archaeologist  and  subsequently  was 
called  to  the  Smithsonian  Institution  at  Washington)  seems 
to  indicate  that  the  unaided  efforts  of  children,  rather  than 
their  parent  or  teacher-guided  labours,  are  the  lines  in 
which  the  earlier  achievements  of  the  race  are  more  liable 
to  be  repeated. 

Mr  Walter  Hough,  who  has  investigated  experimentally 
methods  of  fire-making,'  observes :  'There  is  a  prevalent  belief 
that  to  make  fire  by  friction  of  two  sticks  '  [presumably  the  first 
fire-apparatus]  '  is  very  difl^cult.  Such  is  not  the  case.  The 
writer  can  make  fire  in  ten  seconds  with  the  twirling-sticks,  and 
in  five  seconds  with  the  bow-drill.  Captain  John  G.  Bourke, 
U.S.A.,  furnishes  corroborative  testimony  on  this  point,  to  the 
effect  that  the  Apache  can  generate  fire  in  less  than  eight 
seconds.  Most  tribes  make  fire  on  wood  in  less  than  two 
minutes ;  if  a  longer  time  is  consumed  it  is  probable  that  the 
^  A»ier.  Anthrop.,  III.  p.  361. 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE    PAST         245 

people  under  observation  are  not  properly  prepared,  or  are 
practising  a  waning  art.' 

The  Hand/ess  and  Limb/ess. — Man  really  astonishes  his 
fellows  sometimes  by  what  he  is  able  to  accomplish  when  he 
possesses  a  human  brain,  but  lacks  one  or  more  of  the  physical 
accompaniments  of  perfect  manhood  or  womanhood.  Man 
can  come  very  near  to  being  a  monster,  and  yet  live  and  move 
and  have  his  being. 

To  the  young  of  man  and  other  mammifers  who  are  born 
with  such  teratological  characters  as  give  them  a  position  inter- 
mediate between  malformations  and  real  monsters,  Broca  gives 
the  name  ectromelian  (expuo),  '  I  cause  to  abort,'  and  /isXoc, 
'member').  Though  the  greater  part  of  such  beings  are  not 
destined  to  adult  life,  there  is  no  doubt  that,  unlike  '  monsters,' 
these  ectromelians  are  perfectly  viable,  possess  often  a  robust 
constitution,  are  fecund  after  their  kind,  and  often  attain  to  ad- 
vanced old  age.  In  ectromelians  the  shoulder  and  the  pelvis, 
the  two  characteristic  regions  of  the  trunk-ends  of  the  body, 
are  most  often  nearly  normal  in  their  development,  the  mal- 
formation affecting  only  the  free  or  exterior  portions  of  the 
members.  Sometimes  the  hand  or  the  foot  seems  to  be  attached 
directly  to  the  shoulder  or  pelvis,  a  condition  of  affairs  recalling 
the  seals  (whence  the  term  phocomelian),  whales,  moles,  etc. ;  in 
other  cases  the  lower  segments  of  the  limbs  are  lacking  almost 
entirely,  being  reduced  often  to  mere  round  stumps  (to  these 
cases  the  name  hemimelian,  '  half-membered,'  has  been  ap- 
plied) ;  again,  the  abnormality  of  conformation  may  affect  both 
segments  of  the  limbs  at  the  same  time,  reducing  the  members 
to  mere  appendices  of  the  shoulder  and  pelvis — the  complete 
type  of  ectromelians  (82,  p.  198). 

While  'monsters'  die  very  shortly  after  birth,  ectromelian 
infants  (exempt  in  the  majority  of  cases  from  serious  anomalies 
of  the  trunk,  and,  especially,  of  the  face)  are  strong  and  healthy  : 
'  In  respect  to  intelligence,  general  health  and  strength  of  the 
muscles  which  they  possess,  they  yield  in  nothing  to  individuals 
whose  members  are  perfectly  developed.'  Those  whose  hands 
and  feet  are  not  entirely  lacking  acquire  a  surprising  facility  of 
movement  by  means  of  the  stumps  which  nature  has  left  them. 
Those  armless  and  handless  use  their  feet  as  organs  of  touch 
and  prehension,  and  often  reach  great  skill  in  the  employment 
of  a  needle,  a  pen,  or  a  painter's  brush.  Ketel,  according  to 
Camper,  painted  with   his  foot,  and  Ducornet,  '  born  without 


246  THE   CHILD 

arms,'  as  he  was  surnamed,  attained  a  h\<j}\  rank  among  the 
artists  of  Paris  in  the  present  century,  'i'homas  Schweicker, 
although  he  was  armless,  '  cut  his  pen,  wrote,  drew  and  carved 
with  his  foot,'  and  Ledgewood  (exhibited  before  the  Anatomical 
Society  by  Broca  in  1852),  who  had  no  other  organ  of  pre- 
hension than  a  four-toed  foot,  could  'clothe  himself,  shave, 
write,  load  and  fire  a  pistol,  pick  up  a  pin  from  the  floor,  etc' 
Moreover,  he  was  able  to  scratch  his  head  with  his  foot,  and 
by  placing  a  thread  between  his  lips,  could,  unaided,  thread  a 
needle.  To  the  ectromelians  who  are  entirely  limbless  the 
mouth  comes  to  be  wonderfully  serviceable,  the  teeth  and  the 
lips  recovering,  perhaps,  some  of  their  ancient  skill  and  cun- 
ning in  prehension  and  retention. 

According  to  Broca,  abortion  of  the  thoracic  members 
does  not  at  all  affect  the  genital  organs,  the  phocomele  Duval 
(19  years  old),  e.g.,  possessing  perfectly  developed  genitals. 
Ledgewood  married,  and  his  wife  gave  birth  to  a  robust  and 
perfectly  well-formed  boy.  There  seems  to  be,  indeed,  no 
direct  proof  of  ectromelian  heredity  in  man,  which  is  in  line 
with  the  general  law  that  anomalies  are  less  liable  to  be 
transmitted  by  heredity  (direct  or  collateral),  the  more  serious 
they  are — anomalies  of  the  limbs,  e.g.,  as  compared  with 
anomalies  of  the  fingers  and  toes. 

The  complete  or  almost  complete  abortion  of  the  ab- 
dominal members  is,  however,  usually  accompanied  by  an 
arrest  of  development  of  the  testicles,  which,  remaining  in  the 
abdomen,  do  not  produce  spermatozoids ;  though  when  only 
one  of  these  members  is  affected  by  ectromely  the  descent 
of  the  testicles  takes  place  regularly. 

PreJmisUe  Foot. — At  the  other  end  of  the  scale  from  the 
ectromelians  are  those  geniuses  of  the  Terpsichorean  art, 
whose  hands  and  feet  seem  everywhere  at  once — those  ancient 
ambassadors  who  expressed  their  message,  as  do  to-day 
certain  primitive  peoples,  by  the  dance,  and  not  by  oral  or 
written  speech.  Here  belong  also  the  prehensile -toed 
Negroes,  Chinese,  Japanese,  and  other  Eastern  Asiatics, 
who — especially  the  trained  gymnasts  and  others — perform 
wonders  with  their  feet.  As  Carrara  and  Ottolenghi  have 
shown,  the  greater  space  between  the  first  and  second  toes, 
the  power  of  separating  them,  and  certain  degrees  of  pre- 
hensility,  are  more  marked  in  normal  women  than  in  normal 
men,  while  criminals,  prostitutes,  idiots,  epileptics  and  other 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE   PAST         2^'J 

degenerates  approach  even  more  closely  the  condition  present 
in  the  feet  of  the  prehensile-toed  among  the  lower  races  of 
man.  Baker  says  (21,  p.  305):  'It  is  quite  possible  to  train 
the  toes  to  do  a  certain  kind  of  prehensile  work,  even  to  write, 
cut  paper,  and  sew.  A  baby  not  yet  able  to  walk  can  often 
pick  up  small  objects  with  its  toes.'  If  one  compares  'the 
marks  caused  by  muscular  action  on  the  sole  of  a  baby's  foot 
with  those  on  the  hand,'  one  will  find  'distinct  signs '  of  this 
prehensility.  These  phenomena  have  been  more  recently 
discussed  by  Dr  Robinson  in  his  article  on  'The  Meanings  of 
a  Baby's  Footprint,'  in  which  many  interesting  facts  are 
brought  out,  and  comparisons  made.  The  role  of  practice 
and  training  in  prehensility  is  emphasised  by  Dr  Quantz  after 
Virchow  (516,  p.  454). 

In  a  sense,  however,  all  civilised  men,  at  least,  are  ectro- 
melians,  as  the  result  of  what  has  been  termed  '  supplementary 
organs  of  sense,'  '  extra-organic  evolution,'  etc. 

Extra-Organic  Evolution. — In  the  course  of  an  interesting 
essay  on  'Discontinuities  in  Nature's  Methods,'  Mr  H.  H. 
Bates,  emphasising  the  substitution  of  psychical  for  physical 
evolution  which  has  taken  place  in  man,  says :  '  Modern 
locomotion  is  a  true  discontinuity  in  natural  phenomena, 
judged  by  its  results.'  The  plesiosaur  and  the  dinosaur,  the 
great  ravagers  of  the  sea  and  roaraers  of  the  earth,  moving  by 
their  own  immediate  exertions,  are  gone,  and  man,  in  the 
steamer's  cabin  or  the  Pullman  car,  traverses  the  globe. 
Moreover,  '  man  does  not  inhabit  them,  as  the  hermit  crab 
inhabits  his  foreign  shell.  He  uses  them,  parasitically,  as 
a  means  of  locomotion.'  From  the  fishes'  tail  and  the  birds' 
wing  to  the  wheel,  man's  creation,  is  a  great  leap  (41, 
p.   140). 

Drummond,  in  his  Ascent  of  Man,  has  told  m  rather 
exaggerated  fashion  'the  forfeit  man  has  had  to  pay  for  his 
taming ' — the  way  in  which  civilisation  with  axe  and  club  in 
the  beginning,  and  nowadays  with  spectacles,  telescopes, 
microscopes,  cameras,  telegraphs,  telephones,  instruments  and 
vehicles  of  all  sorts,  has  'supplemented  the  senses,'  and  sealed 
the  doom  of  the  further  development  of  certain  limbs  and 
organs  of  the  body.  The  real  evolution  of  these  human 
attributes  to-day  lies  in  their  progress  from  the  uselessness 
and  weakness  of  the  child  to  the  functional  use  in  men  and 
women.     Individual  psychic  and  social  factors  are  now  more 


248  THE   CHILD 

powerful  than  race-influences  and  the  species-instinct  once 
were.  It  is  not  now  a  case  of  an  active  young  monkey  cUmb- 
ing  nianward,  but  of  a  helpless  little  human  reaching  up  into 
the  fulness  of  human  action  and  human  thought.  The  dullest, 
weakest  babe  is,  altogether,  much  more  of  a  human  being 
than  is  the  brightest,  strongest  little  monkey — they  are  akin, 
but  not  the  same — and  the  child  of  civilised  man  is  slowly 
but  surely  becoming,  also,  less  of  a  savage  with  the  lapse  of 
years. 

'  Expansion  '  rather  than  '  degeneration '  is,  perhaps,  the 
right  word  here.  Mr  I)ruii\mond's  suggestive  remarks  are 
enlarged  upon  by  Dr  Arthur  Allin,  in  his  paper  on  '  Extra- 
Organic  Evolution  and  Education,'  and  Professor  Baldwin,  in 
his  Child  and  the  Race,  emphasises  the  tendency  to  inherit  the 
social  mi/ieu  and  disposition  thus  constituted,  while  other 
more  recent  essays,  like  those  of  Papillault,  give  full  weight  to 
the  social  shaping  of  the  organs  themselves.  As  Bates 
observes,  'the  creative  brain  of  man'  has  introduced  'a  new 
mode  of  structure  and  function,  of  utilising  a  planet'  (41, 
p.  139),  and  the  social  mind  of  man,  it  might  be  added,  has 
gone  on  improving  and  perfecting  it. 

Fecial  Attitudes. — Forster,  in  his  Life  of  Dickens,  records 
Dickens's  impressions  of  a  girl  of  ten,  who  was  born  deaf,  dumb 
and  blind :  '  The  moment  she  is  left  alone  (or  freed  from  any- 
body's touch,  which  is  the  same  thing  to  her)  she  instantly 
crouches  down  with  her  hand  up  to  her  ears,  in  exactly  the 
position  of  a  child  before  its  birth.  I  thought  this  such 
a  strange  coincidence  with  the  utter  want  of  advancement  in 
her  moral  being,  that  it  made  a  great  impression  on  me ;  and, 
conning  it  over,  I  began  to  think  that  this  is  surely  the  invari- 
able action  of  savages  too.'  This  'foetal'  position  is,  curiously 
enough,  common  in  women  under  certain  conditions.  During 
the  menstrual  period  young  women,  when  not  restrained  by 
the  etiquette  of  company,  frequently  adopt  practically  this 
posture.  Dr  Frank  Baker  also  informs  us  that  in  uterine  dis- 
placement (hardly  known  among  quadrupeds),  'one  of  the 
most  effective  postures  for  treating  and  restoring  to  place 
the  diseased  organ  is  the  so-called  "knee-elbow"  position, 
decidedly  quadrupedal  in  character'  (21,  p.  31  iV  in  which  the 
body  is  supported  on  the  elbows  and  knees.  Havelock  Ellis 
(183,  p.  66)  notes  the  'numerous  and  marked  advantages  of 
this  posture   in   the   diseases   of  women,'  as   introduced  by 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE    PAST         249 

Marion   Sims,  whose  discovery  of  this  posture  has  been  de- 
scribed as  '  the  turning-point  in  the  history  of  gynaecology.' 

The  posture  assumed  by  women  just  before  childbirth  is 
also  of  interest  in  this  connection,  the  position,  as  can  be  seen 
from  figures  in  the  second  volume  of  Ploss  being  often  the 
foetal  one  (as  far  as  practical)  among  primitive  peoples.  This 
posture  is  very  frequently  represented  in  primitive  art.  But, 
as  may  be  seen  from  the  historical  study  of  Morgoulief  (436). 
the  position  taken  by  the  woman  during  childbirth  varied  in 
ancient  times  as  much  perhaps  as  to-day — lying,  crouching, 
standing,  sitting,  are  all  modes  of  remote  antiquity.  Another 
posture,  often  evidencing  atavistic  peculiarities,  is  that 
assumed  by  the  sexes  when  urinating  (183,  p.  61).  A 
quadruped-like  form  of  coitus  is  said  by  some  authorities 
to  be  found  not  infrequently  among  the  lower  races  of  man 
{e.g.,  in  certain  parts  of  Australia,  Africa,  etc.). 

That  in  sleep  man  tends  to  assume  atavistic  attitudes  and 
postures  is  indicated  by  not  a  few  facts.  Not  merely  mentally, 
but  physically  also,  man  is  in  a  'reduced'  state  when  asleep, 
practically  in  some  respects  a  savage,  or  an  anthropoid.  These 
topics  have  been  exhaustively  treated  by  Mme.  de  Manaceine 
in  her  work  on  Sleep,  its  Physiology,  Pathology,  Hygiene,  and 
Psychology,  Baldwin  (23,  5),  notes  also  the  '  reversion  to  the 
child-type  occasioned  by'hypnotism,'  which  sometimes  involves 
attitudes  and  postures.  Quantz  again  (463)  remarks  that : 
'  The  sleep  of  children  shows  physiological  tendencies  which 
suggest  certain  ancestral  modes  of  life.  Young  children  when 
left  to  themselves  will  naturally  go  to  sleep  on  their  stomachs, 
with  their  limbs  curled  under  them,  or  often  using  one  arm  as 
a  pillow,  which  is  exactly  the  position  adopted  by  orangs  and 
chimpanzees.'  West  Indian  mothers  and  nurses,  we  are  told, 
lay  children  down  in  this  way,  and,  as  Robinson  has  remarked, 
'  some  savage  tribes  sleep  with  the  head  bent  down  upon  the 
knees,  just  as  monkeys  do.' 

Dr  William  Browning  ^  remarks  concerning  a  gifted  col- 
league, that  he  'sleeps  on  his  belly,  but  with  the  forehead 
resting  on  one  arm.'  The  physician  in  question  '  alleges  that 
he  thus  imitates  primitive  man,  since  our  wandering  ancestors 
must  usually  have  lacked  pillows,  and  so  have  eked  out  a 
headrest  with  the  arm.'  Some  people  also  '  sleep  on  the 
belly  with  the  face  turned  to  one  side.'  Dr  Browning  m- 
1  A/    j;  Med.  Jour.,  LXIX.  p.  636. 


250  tllE   CHILt) 

forms  us  that  the  type  of  those  who  sleep  with  the  head 
lower  than  the  usual  average  is  '  natu:ally  more  frequent  in 
the  sick.' 

The  'chin-knees'  position  is  a  favourite  one  in  the  dispo- 
sition of  the  dead  among  primitive  peoples,  although  in  some 
cases  it  may  have  been  determined  by  the  nature  of  the 
receptacle  for  the  corpse.  Savage  and  barbarian  prepare  man 
for  entrance  into  the  next  world  by  arranging  him  much  as  he 
was  before  he  entered  this. 

Postures  in  Fatigue  and  Excitement. — Fatigue,  asTissie  notes, 
sometimes  induces  atavistic  attitudes  and  j)Ositions,  so  the 
tired  individual  of  the  higher  race  is  often  physically  on  a  par 
with  the  individual  of  the  lower.  Fatigue,  like  age,  mimics 
the  past  history  of  the  individual  and  of  the  race.  Excite- 
ment and  emotion  are  also  promoters  of  atavistic  body  actions, 
as  the  studies  of  the  automatisms  of  actors,  preachers,  orators, 
etc.,  prove,  while  the  higher  mental  processes  among  civilised 
individuals  are  often  accompanied  by  unconscious,  or  semi- 
conscious automatisms  of  a  physical  or  a  physiological  nature, 
once  the  regular  companions  of  the  less  developed  forms  of 
such  mental  activities.  Doctors  Lindley  and  Partridge,  in 
their  study  of  '  Some  Mental  Automatisms,'  suggest  that  the 
avoiding,  or  careful  stepping  on  cracks,  planks,  etc.,  in  plat- 
forms, floors,  board  walks,  carpet-seams,  shadows  of  electric 
light,  bars  of  sunlight,  gravel  stones,  water-ways,  vacant  places, 
door  sills,  registers,  bricks,  tiles,  knots,  furrows,  nail-heads, 
etc.,  so  common  in  children  and  by  no  means  rare  even  in 
adults,  may  be  '  the  remnants  of  an  ancestral  foot-conscious- 
ness, once  an  important  part  of  the  psychic  life,  but  now 
shrivelled  up  to  insignificant  proportions,'  and  not  merely 
'  associations  built  up  in  childhood  by  imitation,  added  to  by 
folk-lore  and  games,'  etc.  (361,  p.  52).  The  foot  is  not  so 
much  the  '  wegweiser '  with  us  as  it  was  with  our  ancestors, 
and  even  the  extreme  sensitiveness  of  the  palms  of  the  hand, 
no  less  than  that  of  the  soles  of  the  feet  in  man  to-day,  tells 
one  story  of  the  struggle  for  existence.  To  be  '  foot-sure ' 
was  to  survive,  and  keenness  of  foot,  no  less  than  fleetness  of 
limb,  won  the  day.  The  foot-play  of  children  before  they 
enter  the  water  when  swimming  may  also  belong  here  with 
many  other  surviving  'feels'  of  hands  and  feet.  Nor  far 
removed,  perhaps,  is  the  '  insane  desire '  to  touch  everything. 
In  the  excitement  of  their  contortions  and  dances,  we   are 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE   PAST         25 1 

told  (516,  p.  465),  'the  medicine-men  and  sorcerers  among 
primitive  people  assume  many  ape-like  attitudes';  indeed, 
religious  ecstasy  and  the  fervour  of  the  dance  originate  similar 
phenomena  all  over  the  world,  as  the  history  of  the  saints  and 
fakirs  in  all  countries  and  all  ages  proves.  And,  quite  at  the 
other  end  of  the  scale,  the  modern  systems  of  gymnastics 
have  their  atavisms,  against  which  eminent  authorities  have 
protested. 

In  his  Physical  Education  of  Youth  (444,  p.  150),  Dr 
Angelo  Mosso  cites,  somewhat  approvingly,  Lagrange's  desig- 
nation of  the  German  system  as  '  monkey  gymnastics,'  in 
protest  against  its  employment  of  apparatus  which  compelled 
man  to  leave  the  ground  and  support  the  weight  of  the  body 
with  the  arms.  The  great  difference  between  the  brain  of 
man  and  that  of  the  anthropoids  ought  to  be  our  warrant 
against  the  routine-teaching  of  ape-like  attitudes.  Man  has, 
indeed,  no  call  to  insure  bodily  and  mental  health  by  turning 
monkey. 

Much  that  is  interesting  concerning  the  relative  verticality 
of  the  individual  at  various  stages  of  his  existence,  of  the 
sexes,  races,  social  classes,  etc.,  may  be  read  in.G.  Delaunay's 
comparative  biological  studies  (154,  p.  47).  Havelock  Ellis, 
who  cites  Delaunay,  says  (183,  p.  59):  'The  apes  are  but 
imperfect  bipeds,  with  tendencies  towards  the  quadrupedal 
attitude;  the  human  infant  is  as  imperfect  a  biped  as  the  ape ; 
savage  races  'do  not  stand  so  erect  as  civilised  races.  Country 
people  (even  apart,  according  to  Delaunay,  from  agricultural 
labour)  tend  to  bend  forward,  and  the  aristocrat  is  more  erect 
than  the  plebeian.  In  this  respect  women  appear  to  be  nearer 
to  the  infantile  condition  than  men.'  This  holds,  perhaps, 
even  of  quite  primitive  races.  The  degenerate,  insane  and 
criminal  classes  offer  sometimes  evidence  of  less  humanness 
with  respect  to  the  erect  attitude,  but  care  is  needed  in  this 
field. 

jSIany  attitudes  characteristic  of  apathetic  states  are, 
according  to  Fere,^  due  merely  to  muscular  weaknesses  (though 
similar  phenomena  are  sometimes  present  in  the  chimpanzee 
and  other  anthropoids),  and  cannot  be  considered  atavisms,  a 
view  shared  also  by  Nacke.  Muscular  virility  may  in  like 
manner  be  justly  held  to  account  for  some  attitudes  character- 
istic of  activity,  which  have  also  been  considered  atavistic. 
1  Rev.  de  Mid.,  1896. 


252  THE   CHILD 

Swimming. — Did  one  not  recollect  the  common  jest  at  the 
expense  of  the  sailor  to-day,  it  would  seem  incredible  that 
there  should  exist  on  the  globe  tribes  of  men  ignorant  alto- 
gether of  the  art  of  swimming.  Yet  we  are  told,  'it  was  the 
reproach  of  the  Choctaws,  living  on  the  Mississippi  River,  that 
they  could  not  swim,' and  Dr  D.  G.  Brinton  says  of  thcTapuyas, 
a  very  primitive  people  of  Brazil,  that  '  they  manufacture  no 
pottery,  build  no  canoes,  and  do  not  know  how  to  swim' 
(75,  p.  23S). 

According  to  Dr  Hyades,  of  the  French  scientific  mission 
to  Cape  Horn,^  it  is  a  curious  fact  that  the  Fuegian  men 
around  Cape  Horn  cannot  swim,  although  they  pass  a  large 
I)art  of  their  time  in  their  pirogues  ;  but  their  women  there, 
and  everywhere  on  the  coast,  are  skilled  swimmers.  They 
swim  nearly  as  dogs  do.  The  consequence  is,  that  when  a 
pirogue  upsets^a  rather  common  accident  —  the  men  are 
frequently  drowned,  while  the  women  swim  ashore.  No 
explanation  of  this  condition  of  things  could  be  obtained, 
though  one  sarcastic  Fuegian  told  Dr  Hyades  that  only  the 
women  could  swim,  as  they  alone  had  breasts  which  would 
float  them  in  the  water.  It  may  be,  however,  that  here 
Nature  is  really  aiding  the  fittest  to  survive. 

Dr  Fritjof  Nansen,  in  his  sketches  of  Eskimo  life,  declares 
that  reading  and  writing  have  been  introduced  among  these 
people  'at  the  expense  of  skill  in  managing  the  kayak  (the 
characteristic  Eskimo  boat),'  the  number  of  deaths  from 
drowning  having  largely  increased  since  the  introduction  of 
the  school  and  the  church.  It  is  often  dangerous  to  attempt 
to  teach  an  old  race  new  tricks.  In  ancient  Athens,  however, 
children  were  taught  to  read  and  to  swim,  as  two  of  the  prime 
arts  of  social  life,  the  lack  of  which  relegated  the  individual 
to  the  lowest  ranks  (357,  p.  436). 

With  many  savage  and  barbarous  peoples  all  over  the 
world  children  of  both  sexes  learn  to  swim  well  at  a  very 
early  age.  The  Andamanese  boys  and  girls  are  very  good 
swimmers,  learning  almost  as  soon  as  they  can  run ;  so  also 
some  of  the  Kootenay  and  other  Indians  of  North  America, 
who  are  very  fond  of  the  water.  The  Siouan  Indians,  accord- 
ing to  Dr  W.  J.  McGee,"  were,  for  the  most  part,  '  fine  swini- 

1  Hyades  and  Deniker's  Jl/iss/on  Sacntijique  du  Cap  Horn,  Vol.  VII. 
p.  214. 

^  Aim.  Kep.  Bur.  Ethn.,  XV.  p.  172. 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE   PAST        253 

mers — men,  women  and  children' — although  they  'did  not 
compare  well  with  neighbouring  tribes  as  makers  and  managers 
of  water-craft.'  Even  among  primitive  peoples  the  best  navi- 
gators are  not  always  (perhaps  not  commonly)  the  best  swim- 
mers. The  natives  of  Tahiti,  and  other  islands  in  the  South 
Pacific,  '  are  fond  of  the  water,  and  lose  all  dread  of  it  before 
they  are  old  enough  to  know  the  danger.' 

Sir  David  Wedderburn  ^  thus  describes  the  bathing  of  the 
Maoris  of  New  Zealand,  'a  nation  of  perfect  swimmers,  the 
women  no  less  than  the  men,'  in  the  warm  springs  of  the 
country :  *  At  sunset  the  whole  population  of  a  village,  men, 
women  and  children,  may  be  seen  disporting  themselves  in 
the  tepid  depths,  or  seated,  with  the  water  up  to  their  necks, 
on  the  smooth,  enamelled  sides  of  these  natural  thermae. 
Infants  in  arms  bathe  along  with  the  rest,  learning  to  swim 
before  they  are  able  to  walk.'  We  learn  also  that  in  the 
Maori  legend,  corresponding  to  the  classic  tale  of  Hero  and 
Leander,  it  is  the  woman  '  who  performs  the  feat  of  swimming 
over  to  the  island  of  Mokoia.' 

The  inability  of  man,  as  compared  with  the  quadrupeds, 
to  swim  naturally  and  instinctively  without  previous  training 
or  effort,  is  a  fact  which  Robinson,  in  his  essay  on  '  Darwinism 
and  Swimming,'  seeks  to  account  for  from  the  arboreal  life  of 
the  ape-like  ancestors  of  the  race,  and  Quantz,  who  has  inves- 
tigated the  'dendro- psychoses'  of  the  present  sons  and 
daughters  of  mankind,  expresses  the  general  opinion  that  'the 
higher  apes'  dread  of  Avater  and  the  loss  of  their  ability  to 
swim  are  no  doubt  the  result  of  their  life  being  exclusively 
arboreal'  (516,  p.  456). 

Mr  Irwell  points  out  that  in  trying  to  swim  in  deep 
water  man  moves  one  hand  after  the  other,  which  he  ought 
not  to  do,  but  which  is  just  what  apes  do  in  climbing 
trees.  Some  primitive  peoples,  like  children,  go  even  further 
back,  and  swim  'dog-fashion.'^  As  Professor  O.  T.  Mason 
points  out,  most  of  the  devices  used  by  children  nowa- 
days as  aids  to  swimming  have  been  exploited  by  savage 
and  barbarous  peoples  (411,  p.  333).  The  Indians  of 
Labrador  'use  little  paddles  to  drag  themselves  quickly 
through  the  water';  Mexican,  Peruvian  and  other  tribes 
*  tie    bundles    of   reeds   together    as    floats ' ;    some    of    the 

Ftn.  Rev.,  XXVH.  p.  801. 
Med.  Rec,  N.Y.,  LIV.  p.  86. 


254  THE   CHILD 

Indians  on  the  (lulf  of  California  'lash  two  light  bits  of 
wood  to  a  vine,  which  they  place  against  the  breasts, 
exactly  after  the  manner  of  the  cork  life-preservers ' ;  while 
Shakespeare's  '  little  wanton  boys  that  swim  on  bladders ' 
compare  with  the  Assyrians  of  old,  who  '  buoyed  themselves 
upon  inflated  goatskins,'  and  the  Eastern  Eskimo,  who  'at 
times  ride  on  the  sealskin  harpoon-floats.' 

Psychic  Atavisms. — '  Psychic  Atavisms ' — regressive  pheno- 
mena of  thought,  feeling  and  action,  considered  apart  from 
})hysical  or  anatomical  atavisms — is  the  title  of  an  extended 
essay  by  Professor  Paolo  Mantegazza,  published  in  1888,  and 
the  literature  of  this  topic  has  increased  vastly  since  then. 
By  '  psychic  atavisms '  (not  necessarily  teratological  or  patho- 
logical) the  author  means  'the  sudden  return  in  individuals  of 
the  higher  races  of  man  of  psychic  characteristics  which  pro- 
perly belong  to  his  savage,  anthropomorphic  or  animal  ances- 
tors.' Such  regressive  mental  phenomena  may  occur  in  at 
least  two  different  ways,  viz. — {a)  by  reason  of  a  standstill  of 
psychic  development  at  the  child-stage ;  (/;)  by  reason  of  the 
reappearance  of  atavistic  qualities,  which  have  skipped  a 
number  of  generations,  the  appearance  in  an  individual  of 
qualities  which  for  long  years  have  been  latent  in  the  stock  to 
which  he  belongs,  but  clearly  characterise  some  of  his  more 
remote  ancestors.  Mantegazza  accepts  the  view  that  the 
mental  development  of  man,  from  childhood  to  adult  age, 
runs  through  briefly  the  same  stages  which  the  race  has  gone 
through  in  the  course  of  its  development.  For  him  the 
Australian  aborigine  represents  man  of  the  river-drift  period, 
and  is  a  creature  '  with  the  intelligence  and  the  feelings 
of  a  European  child  of  to-day,'  the  only  difference  being 
that  the  savage  adult  remains  fixed  in  the  same  stage  of 
development,  while  the  civilised  child  is  capable  of  making 
psychical  progress — a  view  not  entirely  justified  by  the 
more  recent  and  searching  studies  of  primitive  tribes.  The 
second  form  of  psychic  atavism  is  exemplified  when  children, 
whose  parents  are  of  opposite  characters,  manifest  qualities 
altogether  different  from  those  of  their  immediate  progenitors, 
but  closely  resembling,  or  even  identical  with,  peculiarities 
of  ancestors  much  more  remote, — this  Mantegazza  com- 
pares with  the  appearance  of  the  blue  feathers  of  the  wild 
pigeon  in  the  offspring  of  doves  of  differently-coloured 
plumage   and    of    different    race.       Some    of    the    principal 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE   PAST         255 

,  psychic  atavisms '  noted  by  Mantegazza  and  others  are 
as  follows  : — 

Alimentary  Atavisms. — Alimentary  atavisms  appear,  par 
excellence,  in  the  little  child  of  the  modern  civilised  races,  who 
is  vegetarian  in  his  early  years,  delighting  in  all  sorts  of  plants 
and  leaves,  fruits  and  berries,  things  sweet  and  sour ;  it  is 
only  during  youth  that  the  individual  man  becomes  carnivorous 
(in  which  state  he  continues  through  adult  age).  Not  alone 
the  predilection  of  the  child  for  the  products  of  the  vegetable 
kingdom,  but  the  efforts  of  parents  to  keep  meat  away  from 
their  young  offspring,  recall  the  fact  that  in  the  childhood  of 
the  race  man  was  frugivorous,  as  many  of  the  lowest  known 
primitive  tribes  are  still  to-day.  The  predilection  of  all 
peoples,  low  and  high,  civilised  and  savage,  for  oysters  and 
other  moUusks  in  their  raw  state,  may  be  termed  a  universal 
atavism,  which  records  the  fact  that  the  race  enjoyed  a  diet  of 
raw,  uncooked  flesh  before  the  invention  of  fire  and  the  gradual 
rise  of  gentler  instincts  made  the  art  of  cooking  possible. 
The  influences  of  modern  civilisation  are,  however,  rapidly 
creating  in  the  child  of  to-day  appetites  for  cooked  and  pre- 
served meats,  which  do  much  to  off-set  the  inherited  tend- 
encies towards  vegetarianism. 

Mrs  Bergen's  studies  in  the  folk-lore  of  New  England  and 
her  investigations  of  the  popular  names  of  American  plants 
contain  much  information  concerning  the  food  of  a  vegetable 
character,  which  children,  like  primitive  peoples,  seek  out  for 
themselves  in  the  meadow  and  the  forest  The  range  of  these 
vegetable  foods  is  very  great.  The  following  list  made  up 
from  Mrs  Bergen's  papers  contains  indeed  but  a  few  of  them, 
for  their  name  is  really  '  legion '  (leaves,  roots,  stalks,  fruits, 
berries) : — 

Smilax  rotundifolia ;  the  young  leaves,  which  are  eaten, 
are  called  in  certain  parts  of  Massachusetts  'biscuit- 
leaves,'  'bread  and  butter.' 

Claytonia  perfoliata,  called  in  parts  of  California  'wild 
lettuce,'  and  eaten  as  lettuce. 

Saxifraga  mertensiana,  called  in  Southern  California  '  cocoa- 
nuts,'  the  bulbs  being  dug  up  and  eaten. 

Brodicea  capitata,  hog-onion — 'the  corm  tnstes  like  elm- 
bark.' 

Stretopus  roseus — -'the  cathartic  fruit  freely  eaten,' 


256  THE   CIIII.D 

Cyperus  strigoms,  called,   at   Concord,  Mass.,    *  nut-grass,' 

the  tubers  being  eaten. 
Podophyllum  pella/ion,    called    in    Iowa    '  hog-apple ' — the 

mawkish  fruit  is  eaten. 
Astragalus  niexicanus,  called,  in  South-Western  Missouri, 

'  prairie  apple  ' — the  fruit  is  eaten. 
Azalea    nudtplora,    the    insipid    gall-excrescences,    called 

'swamp-apples,'  are  eaten,  like  oak-galls. 
Acorus  calamus  (sweet  flag) — 'the  great  buds  are  considered 

a   delicacy,'  while   'sometimes  the  boys   pull   up  the 

leaves  or  blades  of  the  calamus,  and  eat    the  white 

substance  at  the  base.' 
Apios  tuberosa  (pig-nut) — the  fleshy  tubers  are  dug  up  and 

eaten. 

Other  vegetable  foods,  exclusive,  of  course,  of  acorns  and 
nuts,  are  the  leaves  and  young  sprouts  of  the  'checker-berry,' 
the  bark  of  the  black-birch,  the  bark  and  young  buds  of  the 
sassafras  and  the  'spice-bush,'  the  tender  young  leaves  of  the 
beech,  and  many  more. 

Apple-stealing  and  apple-nibbling,  so  common  in  boys 
(and  often  girls  as  well)  of  all  civilised  races,  have  been  made 
much  of  by  the  evolutionistic  philosophers  as  heirlooms  from 
the  animal  ancestors  of  man.  Schneider,  v.ho  has  written  the 
story  of  the  human  and  the  animal  will,  observes  :  '  Remark- 
ably constant  and  obstinate  is  the  inheritance  of  the  instinct 
for  apple-stealing  and  apple-nibbling  which  manifests  itself  so 
strongly  in  boyhood.  Although  for  generations  past  the  apple 
has  been  only  an  accessory  food,  and  education  has  been 
working  against  this  predilection  of  youth  for  plundering 
orchards,  the  sight  of  the  fruit  arouses  in  the  young  human 
being  still  such  a  strong  desire  and  so  great  an  appetite  that 
the  instinct  often  overcomes  all  notions  of  danger,  even 
when  the  apple  is  still  green  and  unpalatable.  And  who 
is  there  who  does  not  remember  in  adult  age  the  great 
pleasure  which,  as  a  boy,  he  had  in  scaling  his  neigh- 
bour's fence  and  filling  his  pockets  with  apples?  There 
is  no  other  food  the  sight  of  which  awakes  in  youth  so 
strong  a  desire  as  does  the  apple,  and  we  are  led  to  con- 
clude therefrom  that  our  animal  or  savage  human  ancestors 
must  have  been  especially  given  to  eating  apples,  a  view 
that  gains  support  from  the  fact  that,  with  primitive  peoples, 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE   PAST         257 

as   with    monkeys,    the    apple    is    a    chief  article    of  food' 
(613,  I.  p.  70). 

Steinmetz,  however,  who  cites  the  opinion  of  Schneider, 
believes  that  too  much  has  been  made  of  the  idea  of  '  appetite,' 
and  that  the  phenomena  in  question  are  capable  of  other 
explanations,  and  may  arise  from  love  of  adventure,  exercise 
of  powerj  etc.  Moreover,  must  we  explain  the  child's  liking 
for  the  lime  in  confectionery  from  the  clay-eating  propensities 
of  certain  savage  peoples  ?  How  are  we  to  account  for  the 
child's  early  antipathy  to  meat,  when  so  many  primitive  races 
have  been  carnivorous  for  ages,  or  how  explain  the  rarity  of 
anthropophagic  phenomena  in  childhood  ?  And  why  should 
the  child  like  sweet-things,  sugar,  candy,  etc.,  as  much  as  he 
does  apples,  or  even  before  them  ?  How  are  we  to  explain  the 
presence  in  the  boy  at  the  same  time  of  a  frugivorous  and  a 
bellicose  instinct.?  It  has  often  been  said  that  fruit-eating 
primitive  peo[)les  are  less  belligerent  than  those  who  are 
carnivorous.  As  Tarde  well  says  :  '  If  the  ancestor  of  man 
was  frugivorous — that  is  to  say,  a  gentle  animal,  full  of  tender- 
ness towards  his  fellows,  as  are  the  most  of  the  apes,  it  is  not 
war  or  murder  that  we  must  think  of  explaining  by  atavism, 
but  rather  family  life  and  the  development  of  patriarchal 
virtues.'^ 

Keane,  who  holds  that  when  the  precursor  of  man  was 
'driven  by  the  increasing  cold  of  the  first  Ice  Age  from  arboreal 
habits  to  a  nomad  life  on  the  plains  he  readily  acquired 
omnivorous  tastes' — man  in  the  'eolithic' stage  was  'mainly 
frugivorous' — calls  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  higher  apes 
are  not,  as  is  commonly  supposed,  exclusively  herbivorous  in 
their  wild  state,  but  are  also  'insectivorous  and  carnivorous, 
eating  vermin,  eggs,  small  rodents  and  birds  greedily '  (322, 
p.  in). 

Dirt  Atavisms. — '  Dirt '  or  '  filth  atavisms '  are  represented 
by  the  kneading  and  modelling  of  one's  own  excrement,  a 
practice  often  observed  in  monkeys  and  in  children  belonging 
to  the  races  of  highest  culture  and  social  development,  and  not 
unknown  among  even  educated  adults,  for  the  field  of  porno- 
mania  is  indeed  a  wide  one  ;  also  by  like  procedures  with  other 
dirt  and  filth.  Many  facts  of  value  in  the  comparative  study 
of  'filth  atavisms'  are  to  be  found  in  Captain  J.  G.  Bourke's 
learned  and  exhaustive  work  on  Scatologic  Rites. 
^  Philos.  Finale,  p.  6. 


258  THE   CHILD 

Mimetic  Atavisms. — Muscular  or  mimetic  atavisms  are  also 
best  seen  in  the  child,  whose  motions  and  bodily  activities 
are  full  of  regressive  characteristics — biting,  scratching  and 
clawing,  poking  and  handling,  nibbling  and  biting  grass,  stalks 
of  plants,  etc.,  balancing  and  rocking  about,  shuffling  about 
in  the  dry  leaves  on  the  ground,  heaping  up  wet  sand  with  the 
feet,  lying  at  full  length  on  the  green  turf,  climbing  trees, 
paddling  in  brooks  and  streams — all  acts  of  which  adults  are 
much  more  often  guilty  than  is  commonly  supposed.  The 
delight  the  child  takes  in  rolling  about  on  the  green,  soft, 
elastic  earth  is  common  to  monkeys  and  to  men.  It  is  said 
that  the  natives  of  the  Argentine  Republic  who  have  sojourned 
for  a  long  time  in  the  desert  highlands  of  Bolivia,  when  they 
return  to  the  rich  and  blooming  meadows  of  their  own  country, 
leap  and  spring  and  roll  about  as  do  the  colts  and  horses. 
The  pleasure  that  the  ordinary  boy  takes  in  kicking  along  a 
piece  of  wood  or  any  other  small  object  that  may  lie  across 
the  sidewalk  or  the  path  on  which  he  is  going  is  equalled 
only  by  the  subsequently  developing  passion  for  football.  The 
child's  attempts  to  throw  with  the  foot  a  piece  of  wood,  etc., 
placed  across  the  toes  finds  a  parallel  in  the  'stick-kicking' 
race  of  the  Zuni  Indians  as  described  by  Mr  F.  W.  Hodge,  a 
foot-v2iCe  to  which  these  aborigines  are  passionately  devoted. 
'  Considering  the  extreme  lightness  of  the  race-stick,'  says  Mr 
Hodge,  '  the  distance  which  it  is  sent  by  a  single  kick,  or  rather 
toss,  with  the  toes  is  remarkable.  Very  often  a  stick  is  raised 
aloft  in  this  manner  about  thirty  feet  and  falls  at  least  a 
hundred  feet  from  the  point  at  which  it  was  lifted.'  For  such 
races  training  begins  very  early  :  'At  almost  any  time  a  naked 
youngster  of  four  or  five  years  may  be  seen  playing  at  kicking 
the  stick  outside  the  door  of  his  own  home,  or,  if  a  year  or  two 
older,  coming  from  the  cornfield — where  he  has  been  dutifully 
engaged  in  frightening  off  the  crows — tossing  the  stick  as  far  as 
his  liitle  feet  will  allow  him.'  The  little  boys  also  have  their 
own  match-races.  ^ 

Genital  Atavisms.  —  Genital  atavisms  are  represented 
alike  by  the  '  love-bites '  and  other  exaggerated  kisses  and 
caresses  which  the  infatuated  of  both  sexes  lavish  upon  each 
other,  and  in  many  of  the  strange  and  bestial  love-expressions, 
which  sometimes  bring  man  down  to  even  a  lower  level  than 
that   on    which    the    brute    stands,    though    many   of    these 

'  A'Her.  Anthr.,  HI.  p.  231. 


THE  CHILD  AS  REVEALER  OF  THE  PAST    259 

phenomena  of  the  latter  sort  are  to  be  accounted  pathological 
or  disease  products.  '  I  could  eat  you,'  still  says  many  a  man 
or  woman  when  kissing  the  beloved,  and,  according  to  M.  Paul 
d'Enjoy,  (192),  the  utterance  is  very  significant.  The  'love- 
bites  '  which  figure  so  prominently  in  Germany  and  England 
among  the  uneducated,  classes,  in  the  days  of  engagement  and 
during  the  honeymoon,  are  but  evidences  of  the  cannibalistic 
origin  of  kissing.  M.  d'Enjoy  tells  us  that  there  are  two 
kinds  of  kissing,  the  '  suction  or  suckle  kiss  '  of  the  white  race, 
and  the  'smell  or  sniff  kiss'  of  the  Chinese  and  certain  other 
Mongolian  peoples.  The  gestures  and  other  movements 
accompanying  both  the  '  white  kiss  '  and  the  '  yellow  kiss  '  are 
such  as  to  indicate  that  they  spring  from  the  idea  of  cannibalistic 
self-preservation,  and  recall  the  scents,  sniffs,  smells,  smacks 
and  bites  of  the  beast  of  prey  at  its  victim.  In  the  case  of  the 
Mongolian  the  'smell  of  the  prey  is  still  pleasant,'  in  the  case 
of  the  European  there  lingers  yet  some  shadow  of  the  actual 
cannibalistic  act.  When  the  lover  declares  his  readiness  to 
eat  the  beloved  out  of  sheer  love  he  has  unconsciously  retraced 
aeons  of  the  history  of  animal  life  in  the  world.  It  is  signifi- 
cant, in  this  connection,  that  with  some  primitive  peoples 
kisses  are  only  bestowed  upon  infants,  and  the  mother's  art 
of  '  kissing  the  hurts  and  bruises  of  her  child  to  make  them 
well '  may  not  be  all  pure  affection  ;  so  likewise  the  Mingrelian 
custom  in  accordance  with  which  young  maidens  obtain  for 
themselves  protectors  by  having  youths  bite  at  their  breasts 
symbolically  (107,  p.  217). 

Another  aspect  of  genital  atavisms  must  be  read  of  the 
ever-growing  literature  of  sexual  perversion,  love-fetishism, 
prostitution  male  and  female,  onanism,  phallicism,  etc., 
represented  by  the  recent  works  of  Krafft-Ebing,  Moll, 
Havelock  Ellis,  etc. 

Cruelty  Atavisms. — Atavisms  of  cruelty  embrace  a  large 
category  of  peculiarities  which  are  really  relics  of  the  cruelty 
and  vindictiveness  of  our  forefathers,  so  many  of  which  fierce 
traits  constantly  recur  in  war  and  the  chase  ;  hunting  and 
soldiering  are  both  but  cruelty-professions  in  more  or  less 
civilised  garb — '  killing  is  still  noble,  though  the  fashion  of  it 
has  changed.'  Civilisation  to  day  permits  cannons,  but  forbids 
poisoned  arrows,  allows  a  city  to  be  laid  in  ashes,  but  will  not 
hear  of  poisoning  the  drinking  water  of  the  enemy.  Bull-fights 
in  Spain,  cock-fights  in  America,  rat-fights  among  the  lowest 

18 


2G0  THE   CHILD 

and  most  depraved  classes,  dog-figlits  and  cat-figlUs  among 
criminals  and  children,  all  testify  to  the  powerful  rd/e  still 
{)layed  among  the  most  civilised  races  by  this  class  of  psychic 
atavisms.  Mantegazza  even  goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  he 
himself  has  seen  and  noted  many  times  in  physiologists, 
surgeons,  soldiers  in  battle  and  other  '  professional  killers,' 
involuntary  muscular  twitches  and  movements  which  mani- 
fested the  pleasure  they  took  in  killing.  But  in  more 
'  peaceful '  walks  of  life  these  tendencies  surge  up  also.  The 
same  writer  mentions  the  case  of  a  lawyer,  whose  favourite 
occupation  consisted  in  the  cruel  pursuit  of  wall-lizards,  and 
that  of  a  nobleman,  who  liked  to  feast  his  eyes  on  the  death- 
struggles  of  cats  slowly  boiling  to  death  in  pots  covered  with 
a  wire-grating.  In  children,  again,  this  class  of  atavisms  appear 
with  remarkable  frequency  and  in  notable  exaggeration  ;  the 
deliberate  pulling  to  pieces  of  a  fly  or  the  tearing  apart 
limb  by  limb  of  some  poor  quivering  bird  is  a  familiar 
instance. 

These  '  cruelty  atavisms '  have  been  much  discussed  of  late 
years  by  writers  who  have  dealt  with  the  facts  of  childhood. 
Commenting  upon  the  famous  saying  of  La  Fontaine, — 'this 
age  is  pitiless,' — Compayre  remarks  (123,  p.  308)  :  '  To  judge 
from  appearances.  La  Fontaine  is  right.  But  the  alleged 
cruelty  of  the  child  when  he  tortures  animals  is,  at  bottom, 
only  ignorance.  The  child  is  a  Cartesian  without  knowing  it ; 
he  makes  no  distinction  between  his  Punch  and  his  dog.  If 
the  doctrine  of  the  automatism  of  animals  had  not  had  the 
good  fortune  to  enter  one  day  the  brain  of  a  great  philosopher, 
it  would  find  at  least  perpetual  adherents  in  all  those  little 
e.xecutioners  of  two  or  three  years,  who  torture  their  favourite 
animals  only  because  they  do  not  know  they  hurt  them.' 
Ignorance  and  curiosity,  together,  explain  much  of  the  'cruelty' 
attributed  to  the  child. 

According  to  the  best  teachings  of  the  modern  criminolo- 
gists, '  a  certain  amount  of  cruelty  is  almost  normal  in  healthy 
children,'  and  'the  instinctive  criminal  is  more  distinctly 
marked  by  his  continuance  of  the  same  practices  through- 
out life'  (184,  p.  130).  Among  one  hundred  criminals 
studied  by  Rossi, ^  ten  manifested  this  exaggerated  and  pre- 
cocious cruelty — one,  as  a  child,  being  fond  of  stripping 
young  birds  of  their  feathers  and  then  roasting  them  alive, 
^Arc/i.  d.  Pskh.,  1889. 


THE   CHILD   AS    REVEALER   OF   THE    PAST         261 

while  another  visited  upon  birds  the  punishments  received 
at  the  hands  of  his  parents. 

The  child  is  very  often  similarly-minded  to  the  aborigines 
of  Australia  of  whom  Lumholtz  writes :  '  During  my  sojourn 
at  Herbert  Vale  a  woman  offered  to  sell  me  a  bird,  which  she 
had  deprived  of  the  power  of  flight  by  plucking  out  the 
feathers  of  the  wings  and  tail.  She  laughed  at  and  was  merry 
over  the  poor  bird,  which  was  unable  to  fly  away.  The  natives 
may  often  appear  cruel  towards  animals  and  birds,  though  it 
is  not  their  intention  to  give  pain  to  the  game  they  capture. 
It  amuses  them  to  see  maimed  animals  making  desperate 
efforts  to  get  away.  As  a  rule,  they  kill  the  animal  at 
once,  not  for  the  purpose  of  relieving  it  from  pain,  but 
simply  to  make  sure  of  their  game.  On  many  occasions 
I  observed  how  the  blacks  amused  themselves  by  watching 
kangaroos  whose  hind  legs  had  been  maimed  struggling  in 
vain  to  get  away. 

'  Any  studied  cruelty  towar^^s  the  white  men  is  out  of  the 
question.  They  do  not,  like  the  Indians,  use  torture,  for  they 
are  anxious  to  take  the  life  of  their  enemies  as  soon  as  possible' 
(381,  p.  222). 

Steinmetz's  view  of  the  development  of  the  feeling  of 
revenge,  from  'an  original  stage  of  undirected  revenge,'  in 
which  the  injury  was  retaliated  indiscriminately  on  anyone, 
through  a  stage  of  less  indiscrimination,  in  which  man  came 
gradually  to  the  consciousness  that  '  the  best  means  of 
restraining  wrong  was  to  punish  a  certain  person,  viz.,  the 
wrong-doer,'  has  been  criticised  by  Westermarck  (680,  p.  291), 
who  thinks  many  of  the  cases  cited  in  proof  of  the  theory 
merely  exemplify  '  sudden  anger,'  '  outbursts  of  wounded-self- 
feeling,'  '  fits  of  passion,'  and  not  revenge  in  the  real  sense  of 
the  term,  *  which,  when  not  directed  against  its  proper  object, 
can  afford  only  an  inadequate  consolation  to  a  revengeful 
man.'  Other  cases  are  as  surely  the  records  of '  established  and 
recognised  customs,  and  show  to  what  an  extreme  the  suffer- 
ings of  innocent  people  are  disregarded  among  many  savage 
races.'  Custom,  indeed,  often  clouds  some  of  the  seemingly 
clear  and  strongly-marked  instincts  of  the  savage,  and  Dr 
Westermarck  is  quite  right  in  denouncing  the  uncritical  inter- 
pretations of  these  '  survivals  from  earlier  stages  through  which 
the  human  race  has  passed.'  According  to  Westermarck, 
animal  psychology  enables  us  to  furnish  the  series  of  evolution- 


262  THE   CHILD 

ary  stages  :  'protective  reflex  action,  anger  without  intention  to 
cause  suffering,  anger  with  such  an  intention,  more  dehberate 
resentment  or  revenge,'  phenomena,  all  of  which  '  are  so 
inseparably  connected  with  each  other  tliat  no  one  can  say 
where  one  passes  into  another.' 

A  very  interesting  contribution  to  the  study  of  'cruelty 
atavisms '  is  Dr  F.  L.  Burk's  recent  paper  on  '  Teasing  and 
Bullying,'  wherein  are  contained  the  results  ('the  responses 
include  about  1120  instances  of  teasing  and  bullying,  princi- 
pally reminiscent,  and  a  few  hearsay ')  of  a  syllabus-inquiry  on 
the  subject.  The  varieties  of  '  bullying  and  teasing '  include 
fighting;  egotistic  assertion  of  authority;  obtaining  property, 
service,  obedience,  etc.,  by  bullying ;  tormenting,  teasing, 
hindering,  'aggravating';  excitation  of  fear;  performing,  or 
'almost  performing'  forbidden  things;  teasing  by  taking  away 
or  hiding  property  ;  teasing  by  calling  names  ;  testing  temper  ; 
teasing  individuals  with  personal  peculiarities;  exciting  dis- 
appointment; pleasurable  teasing  about  beaux,  possessions, 
etc. ;  bullying  voluntarily  accepted  by  the  victim,  etc.  The 
varieties  last  mentioned  are  of  considerable  importance,  for 
these  same  self-humiliations  and  abasements  are  rife  to-day  in 
children,  who  thus  seek  to  appease  their  offended  companions, 
playmates,  friends,  in  lovers  who  try  to  win  back  the  favour  of 
the  objects  of  their  affections,  in  women  who  endeavour  to 
rehabilitate  themselves  in  the  eyes  of  angered  or  offended 
husbands.  The  parlour-game  of  '  forfeits,'  and  similar  sports 
in  vogue  among  children,  often  recall  the  same  primitive  actions, 
akin  to  which  are  also  many  of  the  initiation-ceremonies  of 
secret  societies  of  children  and  of  adults,  ancient  and  modern, 
savage  and  civilised.  The  admission  of  children  to  manhood, 
of  women  to  marriage,  of  strangers  and  foreigners  to  citizenship 
or  membership  in  tribal  or  religious  organisations,  the  restora- 
tion of  captives  and  criminals  to  life  and  activity,  all  these 
episodes  were  accompanied  by  acts  of  humihation  and  self- 
abasement,  the  shades  of  which  yet  wander  over  the  play- 
grounds of  the  young  as  well  as  the  parlours  and  club-rooms 
of  the  adults  of  modern  cultured  races.  These  are  mostly  the 
remains  of  punishments  in  which  the  idea  of  humiliation  (now 
given  a  sort  of  altruistic  turn  and  carried  on  with  the  consent 
of  the  victim,  who  smiles  at  his  own  abasement  or  annoyance) 
has  more  and  more  prevailed  over  the  thought  of  physical 
torture,  so  common  among  many  of  the  early  races  of  men. 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE   PAST         263 

Burk  (and  likewise  President  Hall)  is  inclined  to  look  upon 
some  of  the  phenomena  of  teasing  and  bullying  as  a  rude  but 
necessary  species  of  physical  education  for  the  child,  the 
physical  exertions  therein  concerned  being  '  fragmentary  rudi- 
ments of  past  combat,  capture,  and  killing  of  prey  and  enemies,' 
and,  therefore,  '  clearly  the  most  ancient  forms  of  physical  exer- 
cise, by  which  and  for  which  the  organism  developed,  and  has 
become  what  it  was  and  is' — they  are,  in  fact,  'racial  forms  of 
all  exercise'  (92,  p.  371).  This  is  to  be  understood  of  fighting 
and  the  various  forms  of  personal  struggle  and  contact  appear- 
ing in  tag,  prisoner's  base,  blind  man's  buff,  football,  baseball, 
etc.,  and  all  exercises  and  games  in  which  striking,  pursuing, 
capturing,  holding,  treating  in  contempt  and  triumph,  throwing 
missiles,  etc.,  figure  as  essential  factors.  The  teasing  impulse, 
as  both  Burk  and  Groos  point  out,  is  often  largely  in  the  nature 
of  play,  and,  as  the  latter  notes,  it  has  not  infrequently  a  social 
role  in  securing  the  survival  of  the  strongest  in  the  sense  of 
him  who  is  able  to  withstand  best  the  '  teasing  and  bullying ' 
of  his  fellows.  Among  some  primitive  peoples,  and  with  some 
half-civilised  (Siamese,  e.g.,  according  to  Bastian),  teasing  is 
almost  a  fine  art  (253,  p.  294).  One  must  read  Groos's  illumi- 
nating discussion  of  plays  of  animals  and  of  men  in  order  to 
appreciate  rightly  the  views  put  forward  in  such  essays  as 
Johnson's  '  Savagery  of  Boyhood,'  and  Boyle's  '  Persistence  of 
Savagery  in  Civilisation,'  to  say  nothing  of  the  less  reasonable 
literature  of  the  Lombrosan  school  of  criminologists,  so  many 
of  whom  attach  altogether  too  much  importance  to  atavisms  of 
this  sort. 

Miscellaneous  Atavisms.— \}\-\^<tx  the  head  of  miscellaneous 
atavisms  Mantegazza  has  grouped  a  large  number  of  regressive 
phenomena,  e.g.,  the  occurrence  of  mental  and  psychic  peculi- 
arities and  qualities  of  ancestors  in  their  descendants,  without 
any  physical  resemblance  between  the  latter  and  the  former ; 
Mantegazza,  himself,  who  does  not  at  all  resemble  his  paternal 
great-grandmother,  possesses,  nevertheless,  her  xa^xVo.^ penchant 
for  gardening.  Other  examples  are  :  (a)  Sometimes  to-day  the 
Bolivian  Indians  appear  before  the  judge  and  request  to  be 
beaten  with  a  stick — a  remembrancer  of  Incasial  and  Spanish 
despotism ;  (/')  women  in  the  height  of  their  love-passion  would 
be  beaten  by  the  objects  of  their  affection,  and  dream  that  in 
their  embraces  they  have  been  mutilated  or  tortured  till  the 
blood  came — a  recollection  of  the  past  ages  of  tyranny  when 


264  THE  CHILD 

the  husband  was  practically  the  executioner,  the  women  the 
sacrificial  offering;  (c)  the  exaggerated  fear-movements  of  the 
Jews  in  the  countries  of  modern  Europe — a  form  of  psychic 
atavism  which  recalls  the  age-long  persecutions  to  which  they 
have  been  subjected  at  the  hands  of  the  Christian  nations ;  (d) 
the  dignity  of  countenance  of  the  'last  Roman'— calling  up 
again  a  mighty  people,  who,  for  centuries,  ruled  the  world ;  (e) 
the  majesty  of  a  Castilian  beggar  in  rags — bringing  back  the 
departed  greatness  and  vanished  glory  of  Spain. 

From  a  careful  study  of  the  family  likenesses  of  the  Hohen- 
zoUerns  and  the  Bourbons,  Count  Theodore  Zichy  reaches  the 
following  conclusions:  i.  Nearly  everybody  has  the  features 
of  some  not  very  remote  ancestor  (if  all  the  series  were  present 
at  once  such  resemblances  would  be  clearly  perceived).  2.  A 
constant  inherited  family  type  does  exist  in  certain  stocks,  but 
by  no  means  in  all.  3.  Between  brothers  and  sisters  (children 
of  the  same  family)  resemblances  are  frequent,  but,  for  the 
most  part,  noticeable  only  in  youth.  4.  Resemblances  between 
parents  and  children  are  best  confirmed  during  the  youth  of 
the  individuals.  5.  Here  and  there  occur  in  individuals  strik- 
ing resemblances  to  very  remote  ancestors  (695). 

Dr  E.  G.  Lancaster,  in  his  essay  on  the  psychology  and 
pedagogy  of  adolescence  (345,  p.  17),  calls  attention  to  the 
changes  of  form  and  feature  in  the  growing  child,  some  of 
which  hint  heredity,  'the  final  struggle  and  opportunity  to 
establish  the  type  coming  at  adolescence.'  The  author  cites 
the  following  interesting  case  in  point :  '  As  a  babe  he  looked 
like  his  mother.  At  two  to  three  he  was  the  childish  image 
of  her  mother,  while  in  the  way  he  stood  and  in  a  peculiarity 
of  falling  he  showed  their  traits.  Since  five  or  six  he  has 
grown  to  look  very  much  as  his  father  did  at  that  age,  and 
a  photograph  of  the  father  taken  when  he  was  seven  is  a 
good  likeness  of  the  boy  at  seven.  He  now  walks  and  acts 
like  his  father.  He  will  undoubtedly  look  like  the  father 
and  the  father's  family.'  Allied  phenomena  are  also  noted, 
the  variety  of  'ancestral  traits  cropping  out'  being  quite 
extensive — mental  peculiarities,  movements,  gait,  gesture, 
voice,  etc. 

Dr  Bucke's  Outre  F/m'^.— Some  advanced,  if  not  altogether 
extravagant,  ideas  concerning  the  '  Mental  Evolution  of  Man  ' 
have  recently  been  published  by  Dr  R.  M.  Bucke,  in  an 
address  before  the  British  Medical  Association  at  Montreal  (88). 


TPIE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE    PAST        26s 

The  author  holds  that  'the  mental  plane  of  the  higher  animals 
is  that  of  the  human  being  at  about  two  years  of  age,'  that  '  the 
third  year  of  life  represents  in  the  race  the  age  of  the  alalus 
homo,  the  period  of  perhaps  100,000  years  ago,  when  our 
ancestors  walked  erect,  but  not  having  self-consciousness  had 
no  true  language,'  while  '  th.e  advance  made  by  the  individual 
from  the  age  of  three  to  that  of  thirty-five  represents  the 
advance  of  the  race  between  the  date  of  the  appearance  of  self- 
consciousness  and  to-day.  Dr  Bucke  also  thinks  that  'the 
longer  the  race  is  in  possession  of  a  faculty,  the  more  universal 
will  it  be  in  the  race  and  the  more  firmly  fixed  in  the  individuals 
of  the  race,'  the  musical  sense,  e.g.,  is  now  in  process  of  birth 
into  the  race,  being  not  present  in  more  than  one  half  of  it. 
The  mind  during  sleep  'is  more  primitive  than  the  waking 
mind,'  and  'in  dreams  we  pass  backward  into  pre-human 
mental  life.'  All  forms  of  insanity  and  idiocy,  Dr  Bucke 
believes,  are  cases  of  atavism,  and  rapid  mental  evolution  is 
responsible  for  insanity. 

Dr  Donath,  in  his  brief  but  interesting  address  on  'The 
Beginnings  of  the  Human  Mmd'  (171,  pp.  16-20),  criticises 
many  of  these  statements  of  Bucke,  and  protests  against  the 
tendency  '  to  discover  atavism  in  everything  born  with  abnormal 
development  or  disposition.'  He  rightly  objects:  'When  the 
embryo  has  a  limb  cut  off  by  the  navel-string  winding  about 
it,  that  is  certainly  no  atavistic  phenomenon  ;  nor  is  it  when  a 
germ  infected  by  syphilis  or  poisoned  by  alcoholism  causes  to 
be  born  an  epileptic  or  an  idiot  child.'  So,  too,  hysteria  and 
lunacy  are  not  reversions  to  primitive  forms  of  mind,  while 
other  phenomena,  hastily  judged  atavistic,  are  due  to  mechanical 
interferences,  the  action  of  chemical  substances,  etc.  The 
keen  logic  and  apt  judgment  of  many  primitive  peoples, 
together  with  the  existence  of  corresponding  phenomena  in 
animals  known  to  dream,  the  actuality  and  the  liveUness  of 
these  dreams,  do  not  altogether  favour  the  view  of  the  extreme 
pre-human  character  of  such  phenomena.  The  opinion  of 
Dr  Bucke  that  all  forms  of  lunacy  and  idiocy  are  atavistic  is 
certainly  weakened  by  the  fact  that  these  phenomena  increase 
and  decrease  for  sociological  reasons,  and  seem  to  be  greatly 
influenced  by  syphilis  and  alcoholism. 

Fear  Atavisms. — The  fears  of  childhood  are  'remembered 
at  every  step,'  and  have  been  since  the  grey  dawn  of  civilisa- 
tion.     Mosso,  in  his  monograph  on  fear  (443,  p.  226),  says: 


266  THE   CHILD 

'  The  one  who  brings  up  a  child  represents  its  brain.  Every 
ugly  thing  told  to  the  child,  every  shock,  every  fright  given 
him,  will  remain,  like  minute  sphnters  in  the  flesh,  to  torture 
him  all  his  life  long.'  The  bravest  old  soldier,  the  most  daring 
young  reprobrate  alike  are  incapable  of  forgetting  them  all,  for 
'  the  eye  of  the  child  seems  to  cast  one  more  look  upon  these 
scenes  from  out  of  the  very  depths  of  the  soul.'  The  lamias, 
the  masks,  the  bogies,  ogres,  hobgoblins,  witches  and  wizards, 
the  things  that  bite  and  peck,  that  clutch  and  scratch,  that  nip 
and  crunch,  that  pinch  and  tear,  the  thousand  and  one  imag- 
inary monsters  of  the  mother,  the  nurse  or  the  servant,  have 
had  their  effect,  and  '  hundreds  of  generations  have  worked  to 
denaturalise  the  brains  of  children.'  This  is  added  to  the 
hereditary  fears  which  children  have  of  dogs  and  cats,  and  the 
spectres  of  their  dreams,  so  vividly  real.  Birds,  the  most  fear- 
showing  of  all  animals,  and  guinea-pigs,  of  all  mammals  the 
most  susceptible  to  fright,  hardly  have  behind  them  the  fear- 
heredity  of  the  child.  In  the  words  of  Mosso  :  '  What  we  call 
instinct  is  the  voice  of  past  generations  reverberating  like  a 
distant  echo  in  the  cells  of  the  nervous  system.  We  feel  the 
breath,  the  advice,  the  experience  of  all  men,  from  those  who 
lived  on  acorns  and  struggled  with  wild  beasts,  dying  naked  in 
the  forest,  down  to  the  virtue  and  toil  of  our  father,  the  fear 
and  love  of  our  mother.'  Although  we  cannot  justly  trace 
religion  back  to  fear,  as  did  the  ancient  philosopher,  for  that 
great  storehouse  of  human  feelings  and  emotion  has  many 
monuments  of  love  as  well,  fear  has  done  much  for  the  human 
race. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  contributions  to  the  literature 
of  ata\-ism  which  have  appeared  of  recent  years  is  President 
Hall's  elaborate  '  Study  of  Fears,'  in  which  are  discussed  the 
data  (obtained  by  the  syllabus  method)  concerning  the  nature 
and  significance  of  'the  chief  fears  (298  different  things)  of 
1 701  people  mostly  under  twenty-three  years  of  age.'  Fear  is 
one  of  the  aspects  of  the  human  soul  where  we  may  expect  to 
find  reflections  and  reverberations  of  all  the  past  ages  of  life  in 
the  world,  its  shocks  and  sudden  metamorphoses,  its  long 
subjection  to  particular  environments,  its  contact  with  all  the 
conditions  of  earth,  sea  and  sky,  and  '  the  relative  intensity  of 
these  fears  fits  past  conditions  far  better  than  it  does  present 
ones ' ;  and,  in  youth,  especially,  '  the  intensity  of  many  fears 
is  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  exciting  cause.'     *  Night  is  now 


THE  CHILD  AS  REVEALER  OF   THE  PAST        267 

the  safest  time,'  says  Dr  Hall  (276,  p.  247),  'serpents  are  no 
longer  among  our  most  fatal  foes,  and  most  of  the  animal  fears 
do  not  fit  the  present  conditions  of  civilised  life ;  strangers  are 
not  ustially  dangerous,  nor  are  big  eyes  and  teeth ;  celestial 
fears  fit  the  heavens  of  ancient  superstition,  and  not  the  heavens 
of  modem  science.  The  weather  fears  and  the  incessant  talk 
about  the  weather  fit  a  condition  of  life  in  trees,  caves  or  tents, 
or  at  least  of  far  greater  exposure  and  less  protection  from  heat, 
cold,  storm,  etc.,  than  present  houses,  carriages,  and  even  dress 
afford.  .  .  .  The  first  experiences  with  water,  the  moderate 
noise  of  the  wind,  or  the  distant  thunder,  etc,  might  excite 
faint  fear,  but  why  does  it  sometimes  make  children  on  the 
instant  frantic  with  panic  ? '  The  past  of  man  forever  seems 
to  linger  in  his  present,  and  the  child  no  less  sums  up  and 
reflects  past  ages  of  fear  and  past  fear-ex-periences  than  he 
summarises  physically  the  story  of  mankind. 

Among  the  principal  fears  which  President  Hall  seeks  more 
or  less  to  explain  thus  are : — 

1.  Gravity  Fears. — Fears  of  high  places  and  fears  of  falling ; 
dropping,  hovering,  'cosmic  giddiness,'  gliding,  balancing, 
fljing,  climbing,  and  other  sensations  not  fears.  Some  of  these, 
Dr  Hall  thinks,  'may  be  considered  as  instances  of  arrest, 
some  at  the  stage  before  erect  position  was  acquired,'  while 
others  are  'due  to  an  awakening  of  the  normal  impulse  of 
the  young  of  the  human  species  to  get  up,  not  only  to 
the  full  length  of  the  body,  but  beyond.'  Man's  erect 
position,  '  exceptional  and  lately  acquired,'  counts  for  not 
a  little  here. 

2.  Fear  of  losing  Orientation. — Some  of  the  phenomena 
here  '  almost  suggest  atavistic  relapse  toward  the  early  forms 
of  sessile  life,  or  attachment  to  parental  bodies,  and  remind 
us  how  slow  and  late  in  the  animal  series  well-developed  loco- 
motor organs  came,'  while  others,  on  the  other  hand,  'suggest 
the  migratory  instincts  of  birds,  fishes,  animals,  nomadic  races, 
the  spring  fever  so  common  among  northern  races  after  their 
long  winter,  scholares  vagantes,  tramps,  explorers,  globe-trottei^, 
etc.'  Here  we  have  reminiscences  of  '  the  mortal  dangers  of 
getting  lost  in  a  primitive  gregarious  life,'  which  were  vivid  and 
'  prompted  to  a  careful  study  of  all  land-marks.' 

3.  Fear  of  Closeness,  Smothering,  Choking,  Stifling,  Oppres- 
sion.— Some  of  the  '  reverberations '  here  seem  to  go  back  to 
the  most  primitive  forms  of  life,  while  others  suggest  the  '  un- 


268  THE   CHILD 

confined  '  range  of  nomadic  peoples,  repeated,  perhaps,  in  the 
tendency  of  prisoners  to  'break  out,'  and  preserved  in  the 
'  free  air '  democracies  of  the  old  world. 

4.  Fears  of  Water. — Some  of  the  phobias  here  may  be '  purely 
instinctive  vestiges,  which  originated  somewhere  since  the  time 
wlien  our  remote  ancestors  left  the  sea,  ceased  to  be  am[)hi- 
bious,  and  made  the  land  their  home' ;  in  the  'weaning  from 
the  home  of  all  life,'  the  discipline  was  stern  as  the  alternating 
and  sometimes  intense  love  for  water  as  comj)ared  with  fear  of 
water  shows.  Both  love  of  water  and  fear  of  water  have  been 
conditions  for  survival  in  the  past  of  animal  life,  hence  the 
persistence  of  both  to-day  in  the  child. 

5.  Fears  of  Wind. — Here  we  meet  with  evidence  that  'wind, 
more  perhaps  than  any  or  all  things  else,  created  in  primitive 
consciousness  the  unseen  spiritual  world.'  In  children  and 
adolescents  we  may  discover  '  some  trace  or  scar  of  the  more 
dreadful  storms  of  the  long  age  of  diluvial  man,  or  even  of  the 
older  sea.' 

6.  Fears  of  Celestial  Objects. — In  the  soul  of  the  child  we  can 
still  find  'abundant  traces  of  the  original  psychoplasm,  out  of 
which  primitive  man  created  the  many  fairy  or  demonial  beings 
seen  in  cloud,  fog,  and  all  the  phenomena  of  day  and  night.' 
Children  and  adults  have  for  ages  been  arrested  at  various 
stages  of  such  development,  and  their  fears  made  panicky  or 
permanent. 

7.  Fear  of  Fire. — Here  we  have  suggestions  of  '  fossil  forms 
of  neural  tweaks,  inherited  terrors,  thrills  and  shudders,  which 
we  may  regard  as  survivals  from  a  stage  of  psychic  life  so  low 
and  so  far  transcended  that  the  adult  consciousness,  while  it 
may  repress,  cannot  uproot  them.'  There  are  traces  also  of 
another  psychosis  born  of  the  companionship  of  primitive  man 
and  fire,  so  that  even  now  just  to  idly  gaze  at  fire  starts 
dreamy  reveries,  veined  through  which  are  traces  of  very 
primeval  yet  earnest  thinking.' 

8.  Fear  of  Darkness. — Though  some  children  are  certainly 
free  from  \}cv\%  phobia.,  there  is  abundant  evidence  of  '  the  intense 
and  manifold  fears  of  every  kind  of  monster,  accident,  dreadful 
men,  or  worse  ghosts  that  prey  upon  childhood  in  the  dark.' 
Lacking  our  'better  knowledge,'  children  are  back  with  primi- 
tive man  under  the  rule  of  '  the  old  night  of  ignorance,  mother 
of  fears,'  old  scars  of  the  battle  against  which  they  seem  often 
to  reveal. 


THE   CHILD  AS   REVEALER   OF   THE   PAST        269 

9.  Dream  Fears. — Like  primitive  man,  the  child  realises  in 
dreams  what  he  often  fears  only  in  waking  hours,  and  the 
reverberations  from  the  past  life  of  the  race  are  often  easier 
and  more  detailed. 

10.  Shock. — In  the  animal  world  dread  of  shock  and  sur- 
prise has  led  to  many  modifications  of  habits  and  to  many 
devices  for  preservation  of  the  individual  and  of  the  species. 
In  children,  '  we  still  get  glimpses  not  only  of  what  the  ancient 
chaos  of  ignorance  really  meant,  and  of  the  awful  struggle 
and  loss  by  which  it  has  been  overcome,  but  also  of  the 
sanifying  culture  power  of  what  are  now  the  common-places 
of  science.' 

11.  Fear  of  Thunder  and  Lightning. — One  notable  fact  con- 
fronting us  here  is  that  '  for  primitive  consciousness,  belief  in 
and  reverence  of  powers  above  are  never  so  fervid  as  in  a 
thunderstorm,'  and  the  child  repeats  the  history  of  the  race  in 
his  thunder-fears,  which  modern  society  makes  so  little  use  of 
for  moral,  aesthetic,  and  religious  ends. 

12.  Fear  of  Animals. — Here,  especinlly,  we  catch  glimpses 
of  lapsed  reflexes,  fragments  and  relics  of  psychic  states  and 
acts,  which  are  now  rarely  seen  in  all  their  former  vigour,  and 
which  neither  the  individual  life  of  the  child  nor  even  present 
conditions  can  wholly  explain.  Fear  of  cat,  dog,  cow,  etc., 
may  only  be  coeval  with  the  domestication  of  animals,  but 
fears  of  reptiles,  especially  snakes,  as  marked  in  the  race  as 
they  are  in  the  individual  (monkey  no  less  than  man)  go  back 
much  farther  in  the  history  of  life,  as  must  also  do  some  of  the 
factors  in  the  child's  general  love  of  animals  that  so  often  casts 
out  all  fear. 

13.  Fear  of  Eyes. — In  a  certain  sense,  even  in  man,  the  eye 
is  the  first  thing,  and  often  it  is  all  things.  The  '  big  eyes ' 
that  frighten  the  bad  child,  like  those  the  savage  carves  on  his 
weapons,  masks,  canoes,  etc.,  '  must  owe  some  of  their  terrors 
to  ancestral  reverberations  from  the  long  ages  during  which  man 
struggled  for  existence  with  animals  with  big  or  strange  eyes 
and  teeth,  and  from  the  long  war  of  all  against  all  within  his 
own  species.' 

14.  Fear  of  Teeth. — Here  the  kiss  has  conquered  after  long 
ages  the  old  'archaic  dread  '  that  spread  abroad  'supreme  fear 
wherever  the  law  "  eat  or  be  eaten  "  reigned.'  The  child,  here, 
too,  is  older  than  the  man. 

15.  Fear   of  Fur. — Both    love   and    fear    of  fur  are   'so 


270  THE   CHILD 

Strong  and  instinctive  that  they  can  hardly  be  fully  accounted 
for  without  recourse  to  a  time  when  association  with  animals 
was  far  closer  than  now,  or,  perhaps,  when  our  remote  ancestors 
were  hairy.' 

1 6.  Fears  of  Persons. — In  the  fears,  blushing,  etc.,  of 
children,  we  find  still  '  the  echo  of  old  dreads  of  alien  faces 
long  after  the  voluntary  muscles  or  their  cerebral  centres  need 
not  be  flushed  for  flight  or  fight,'  and  even  '  shyness,  coyness, 
maidenly  modesty,  owe  their  charm  to  the  female  reluctance 
born  of  fear.'  Unconsciously  children  still  treat  even  friends 
as  possible  enemies. 

17.  Fear  of  SoIHiidc. — Man  is  a  gregarious  animal,  and  in 
children's  'horror  of  being  alone,'  we  see,  often  in  arrested  and 
hypertrophied  form,  the  fear  that  has  much  to  do  in  '  making 
the  fashions,  parties,  and  sects  of  the  most  imitative  of  all 
creatures.'  The  long  dependent  infancy  of  the  human  being 
has  been  a  factor  here. 

18.  Fears  of  Deaf h  and  of  Disease. — These  fears,  unlike  those 
of  animals,  seem  rather  to  increase  than  to  decline  with  civilis- 
ation, and  their  absence,  rather  than  their  presence,  must  be 
looked  upon  as  atavistic.  In  these  fears  the  root  from  which 
they  spring  lies  beyond  the  savage  even,  while  some  noble 
struggles  to-day  against  death  and  disease  '  must,  in  part,  have 
been  made  possible  by  heredity  from  a  time  of  ancient  relative 
indifference  to  death.' 

19.  Fears  of  Ghosts. — Here  we  must  admit  that  some  fears 
*  have  taken  their  ri.se  in  the  early  human  period,'  and  man 
still  '  inherits  from  a  savage  ancestry  a  pre-potent  bias,  which 
haunts  the  very  nerves  and  pulses  of  the  most  cultured,  to 
believe  in  ghosts.' 

Fear,  if  it  be  as  G.  Stanley  Hall  suggests,  'anticipatory 
pain,'  has  been  a  great  schoolmaster  of  the  race,  and  the  timid, 
who  so  often  are  the  wisest,  have  survived  not  alone  by  the 
pre-perception  of  the  future,  but  also  by  the  suggestion  of  the 
past.  Fear  was,  perhaps,  the  first  attempt  of  the  race  to 
make  use  of  its  past,  and  out  of  this  has  come  abundance  of 
knowledge. 

Anger  Atavisms. — Atavistic  in  its  general  character  and  in 
many  of  its  specific  tendencies  is  Dr  Hall's  latest  'Study  of 
Anger,'  in  which  also  the  doctrine  is  advanced  that  '  most  of 
the  history  of  life  as  recorded  in  the  rocks  since  the  amphi- 
oxus,  has  been  devoted  to  the  development  of  muscles,  and  to 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE   PAST        2/1 

laying  the  basis  of  all  that  they  presuppose  for  the  soul ;  and 
the  suggestion  is  irresistible  that  the  roots  of  our  emotionnl 
hfe  must  be  traced  back  to  those  Paloiologic  ages  where  pre- 
vertebrate  hfe  had  its  fullest  development'  (277,  p.  77).  The 
story  of  anger,  like  that  of  fear,  demonstrates  the  fact  that 
'  the  feelings  are  infinitely  older  than  the  will,  as  it  is  older 
than  the  intellect.' 

Among  other  physical  manifestations  of  anger,  which  seem 
to  be  atavistic,  Dr  Hall  notes  the  following  : — i.  Swallowing, 
impulse  to  sivallow,  etc. — These  concomitants  of  the  early 
stage  of  anger  in  many  individuals  suggest  the  actions  of  the 
carnivora  and  other  '  pala^o-psychic  associations  '  of  the  attack 
and  slaughter  of  prey — 'the  normal  prelude  to  eating  it.' 
2.  Salivation. — Suggests  the  '  primitive  anticipation  of  savoury 
food '  in  creatures  that  kill  their  prey.  3.  Spitting. — Suggestive 
of  the  purposive  and  aggressive  '  spitting '  of  many  animals — 
especially  noticeable  in  children.  4.  Respiration.  —  The 
modifications  and  disturbances  of  breathing,  which  often 
accompany  anger  in  so  marked  a  fashion,  suggest  the  'pre- 
paration for  a  long  dive,  with  violent  exercise,'  and  the 
'periods  of  deep  and  rapid  breathing,  alternating  with  longer 
periods  of  rest,' required  by  amphibian  life.  5.  Noises. — The 
characteristic  '  cries,  snarls,  growls,  whoops,  bellows,  chatters, 
bleats,  grunts,  barks,'  and  other  noises  of  children,  and  often 
of  adults  in  anger,  suggest  the  cries  and  noises  made  by 
various  of  the  lower  animals.  The  howls  of  packs  of  animals 
have  their  fellows,  if  not  their  descendants,  in  the  batde-cries 
of  savage  races  and  the  defiant  college-yells  at  athletic 
contests.  6.  Attitudes  and  Postures. — Many  of  the  character- 
istic postures  and  attitudes  of  persons  in  angry  moods  suggest 
the  actions  of  the  lower  animals.  7.  Butting  and  pounding 
with  tJie  /lead.  —  These  accompaniments  of  anger,  seen 
especially  in  young  children  (boys  generally),  and  in  some  of 
the  lower  races  {e.g.,  Negroes),  receive  some  explanation  from 
the  fact  that  '  early  vertebrates,  both  aquatic  and  terrestrial, 
move  head  first,  and  there  is  thus  a  long  ancestral  experience 
of  removing  obstacles  and  breaking  way  through  water  with 
the  head.'  The  sideways  blows  of  the  head  in  butting,  and 
the  threatening  sideway  nod  of  children  in  incipient  anger, 
'are  interesting  when  we  reflect  on  the  number  of  horned 
species  in  the  human  pedigree.'  8.  Stamping  and  treading 
upon  the  toes,  feet,  or  other  parts  of  the  body  of  an  opponent 


2/2  THE   CHILD 

in  anger  {cj.^  the  savage  dances  in  whicli  the  ground  is 
stamped  with  great  force)  suggests  the  'stamping  of  the 
enemy  under  foot,'  indulged  in  by  some  of  the  lower  animals 
■■ — repeated  by  the  brutal  classes  in  civilised  human  communi- 
ties. 9.  Making  faces. — The  virtuoso-skill  of  children  in 
'  making  faces,'  not  in  anger  merely,  and  the  '  strange  passion 
for  masks 'seen  in  the  dances,  etc.,  of  savages,  suggest  the 
characteristic  grimaces  of  the  monkeys  and  other  animals,  on 
the  one  hand,  and,  on  the  other,  the  'facial  expressions 
intended  to  strike  terror,'  so  common  in  the  lower  animals. 
10.  Biting,  r/^tw/V/^.  — Perhaps  'the  last  vaso-motor  or  in- 
voluntary automatic  residues  of  what  was  once  a  fully 
unfolded  carnivorous  psychosis '  are  seen  in  the  '  mouth- 
consciousness,'  and  'the  vvould-like-to-eat '  feelings  of  certain 
individuals  in  anger,  while  the  sneer  and  spasmus  cynicus  are 
'  relics  of  dental  attack '  more  fully  represented  by  the  biting, 
chewing,  'gripping'  of  children,  idiots,  savages,  and  the  lower 
and  criminal  classes  among  civilised  peoples,  besides  certain 
sexual  degenerates.  11.  Scmtchi?ig,  clatving,  clutching,  pi?ich- 
ing,  pulling,  etc. — Many  of  the  phenomena  belonging  here  in 
childhood  may  receive  explanation  from  the  ancient  and 
effective  use  of  the  paws  and  claws  '  in  the  felidas  and  other 
animals,  both  in  and  near  the  conjectural  line  of  human 
evolution.'  The  mutilations  occurring  correspond  often  to 
those  in  the  animal-fights  of  ages  past;  the  baby's  'grip,'  too, 
suggests  arboreal  life.  12.  Hugging. — This  accompaniment  of 
anger  in  children  (girls  especially)  suggests  the  aggressive, 
crushing,  strangling  movements  of  some  of  the  lower  animals. 
13.  Pushing,  striking,  etc. — These  more  human  accompani- 
ments, so  common  in  children,  suggest  the  savage  races  of 
men,  some  of  the  anthropoids,  and  certain  animals  lower  down 
in  the  scale  of  being.  14.  Anger  at  inanimate  and  insentient 
objects. — Very  common  in  children,  savages  and  the  un- 
educated. Here  '  we  seem  to  have  a  momentary  lapse  back 
to  a  primitive  animistic  stage  of  psychic  evolution,  in  which 
the  distinction  between  the  things  that  have  life  and  feeling 
and  those  that  lack  both  was  not  established.' 

The  vents  of  anger,  the  reactions  from  anger,  the  control 
of  anger,  the  abandon  in  anger,  the  individual  and  sexual 
variations,  the  correlations  between  anger  and  fear,  and  other 
emotions,  all  offer  other  examples  of  atavistic  or  retrogressive 
phenomena. 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE   PAST         273 

JVork  and  Play. — That  the  work  of  adults  in  one  age  of 
human  history  becomes  the  play  of  children  in  another  is  an 
idea  made  familiar  by  the  researches  of  Tylor  and  other 
writers  of  the  anthropological  school.  Professor  Jastrow,  in 
the  course  of  his  essay  on  analogy,  remarks  that  'the  principle 
that  what  was  once  the  serious  occupation  of  men  becomes  in 
more  advanced  stages  of  culture  the  play  of  children,  or  is 
reduced  from  seriousness  to  mere  amusement,  finds  illustration 
in  the  mental  as  in  the  material  world.  The  drum,  once  the 
serious,  terrifying  instrument  of  the  savage  warrior,  and  the 
rattle,  once  the  powerful  emblem  of  the  medicine-man,  have 
become  the  common  toys  of  children.  The  bow  and  arrow 
are  used  for  skill  and  sport  only'  (313). 

Weapons. — Concerning  the  bow  and  arrow  in  Polynesia, 
Professor  O.  T.  Mason  writes  (411,  p.  3S6) :  'The  pure  Poly- 
nesians seem  to  have  had  no  bows.  .  .  .  The  bow  has  not 
been  known  as  a  weapon  among  the  brown  Polynesians  in 
historical  times.  Its  occurrence  as  a  toy  in  one  place,  and 
as  a  ceremonial  object  in  another,  may  point  to  a  prehistoric 
use,  but  the  fact  remains  that,  while  the  negroid  peoples 
around  them  carried  the  arrow  especially  to  a  high  degree  of 
perfection,  the  brown  race  discarded  the  apparatus  of  the 
archer  altogether.'  In  Hawaii,  the  bow  seems  never  to  have 
been  used  in  war,  but  only  employed  by  the  chiefs  in  shooting 
mice  in  connection  with  certain  religious  ceremonies.  Arrow 
or  dart  throwing,  which  was  formerly  a  man's  game,  is  now 
played  by  boys  and  girls,  so  also  with  reed-throwing  in  some 
of  the  other  Polynesian  Islands,  according  to  Mr  Culin  (135, 

P-  233-) 

Among  even  the  lower  races  of  mankind,  those  who  have 
not  reached  the  stages  of  civilisation  at  all,  the  games  and 
toys  of  the  children,  which  have  not  yet  been  thoroughly 
studied  from  the  point  of  view  of  evolution,  seem  to  represent 
a  bygone  manhood,  or  to  forecast  a  future  one,  just  as  with 
us.  The  story  of  the  'blow-gun'  is  like  that  of  the  bow. 
The  'blow-gun,'  or  'blow-tube,'  the  predecessor  of  the  rifle 
and  the  air-gun  (some  of  the  Indians  of  the  Gulf  States  even 
'lashed  several  reeds  together,  thus  anticipating  the  revolver'), 
is  a  characteristic  war  and  hunting  weapon  among  many  tribes 
of  the  Orinoco-Amazonian  region  of  South  America  and  the 
Malay  Peninsula  and  Archipelago  of  South-Eastern  Asia.  It 
is  also  known  in  Central  America,  and  among  the  Cherokees 


274  THE   CHILD 

and  some  other  Indian  peoples  of  the  south-eastern  portion 
of  the  United  States.  According  to  Professor  Mason  (411, 
p.  279),  in  Copan,  in  Guatemala,  'even  the  children  go  armed 
with  a  sarbacan,  or  blow-tube,  an  instrument  which  they  use 
very  dexterously,  and  which  they  have  inlierited  from  their 
earliest  ancestors.'  Of  certain  Indians  of  the  western  United 
States,  Captain  J.  G.  Bourke,  who  knew  them  well,  says,i 
'  It  is  not  unlikely  that  the  Apaches  were  once  familiar  with 
some  form  of  the  blow-gun,  because  their  children  occasion- 
ally make  use  of  a  toy  constructed  on  the  same  principle.' 
With  some  savage  peoples,  then,  the  blow-tube  would  seem 
to  have  been  used  in  about  the  same  fashion  as  that  delight 
of  civilised  children  the  '  pea-shooter,'  one  of  its  modern 
descendants  and  representatives. 

Bull-roarer. — The  'bull-roarer,'  or 'whizzing  stick,'  which, 
among  many  barbarous  and  savage  tribes  of  both  hemispheres, 
is  an  instrument  of  solemn  or  magical  ceremonial  significance, 
especially  in  connection  with  the  initiation  rites  at  puberty,  is 
with  the  children  of  civilised  races  a  common  plaything. 
This  it  also  seems  to  be  with  some  primitive  peoples. 
According  to  Mr  John  Murdoch,^  the  'whizzing  stick'  is 
very  common  among  the  Eskimo  of  north-western  Alaska, 
and  *is  as  purely  a  child's  toy  as  it  is  among  civilised 
peoples.'  The  bull-roarer  is  known  also  as  a  children's  toy 
or  common  plaything  in  Hawaii,  and  in  several  other  parts  of 
Polynesia,  together  with  several  other  whirring  and  whizzing 
devices  of  like  sort,  although  in  certain  portions  of  the  Pacific 
region  it  is  used  in  connection  with  the  sacred  mysteries,  or 
to  drive  away  ghosts  (135,  p.  220).  Doubtless  careful  study 
of  the  distribution  of  this  particular  instrument  will  reveal 
many  other  instances  of  its  employment  as  a  toy  among 
peoples  who  are  quite  as  primitive  as  those  with  whom  it  is 
in  use  for  more  serious  and  important  purposes. 

Chinese  '' play '  ivith  Inventions.  —  One  cannot  always  be 
sure  that  the  children  in  such  cases  have  the  things  as  toys 
which  their  ancestors  used  as  implements  or  weapons,  for  it 
may  be  that  these  have  always  been  with  certain  peoples 
children's  toys  only,  or  have,  perhaps,  never  progressed  beyond 
the  stage  of  amusement  or  inventive  satisfaction.  The  Chinese, 
in  some  respects,  mentally,  as  well  as  physically,  are  one  of  the 

1  Ainer.  Anthr.,  III.  p.  258. 

2  Amer.  Anthi:,  Til.  p.  59, 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF    THE    PAST         275 

most  childlike  peoples  on  the  globe,  and  Dr  Brinton  calls 
attention  to  their  '  insufficiency  of  development,  strikingly 
illustrated  by  the  little  use  they  made  of  important  discoveries' 
— the  magnetic  needle,  gunpowder,  movable  type,  etc.  This 
people  'were  acquainted  as  early  as  121  a.d.  with  the  power 
of  the  magnet  to  point  to  the  north,  but  the  needle  was  never 
used  in  navigation,  but  only  as  a  toy.  They  manufactured 
powder  long  before  the  Europeans,  but  only  to  put  it  in  fire- 
crackers. They  invented  printing  with  movable  type  in  the 
eleventh  century,  but  never  adopted  it  in  their  printing  offices. 
They  have  domesticated  cattle  for  thousands  of  years,  but 
do  not  milk  the  cows  nor  make  butter'  (74,  p.  200).  This 
example  of  a  people  so  numerous  and  so  remarkably  ingenious 
in  many  directions,  as  are  the  Chinese,  continuing  for  ages 
to  play,  as  it  were,  with  such  great  inventions,  is  perhaps 
unparalleled. 

Mr  David  Boyle,  in  his  discussion  of  'The  Persistence 
of  Savagery  in  Civilisation,'  traces  to  a  savage  source  the  stone- 
throwing  proclivities  of  boys,  and  their  indulgence,  later  on, 
in  the  use  of  slings,  bows  and  arrows,  pea-shooters,  and  later 
still,  revolvers,  rifles,  etc.  (69,  p.  130).  But  here  it  is  not 
so  much  a  question  of  play  perhaps  as  of  perpetuated  sav- 
agery. The  same  thing  might  be  said  of 'cruelty  to  animals, 
cocking-mains,  pugilism,  man-bull  fights,  etc.,'  while  sports  and 
games  may  be  only  '  improved  forms  of  old  hand-to-hand  en- 
counters,' and  music  and  dancing  still  bear  the  traces  of  their 
connection  with  the  excitement  and  rejoicings  of  war  and 
battle. 

Kite-flyiug. — Kite-flying,  which,  except  for  scientific  pur- 
poses, is,  with  us,  a  children's  amusement  and  a  sport  of 
youth,  is  by  no  means  such  all  over  the  world.  In  China, 
from  time  immemorial,  adults  have  delighted  in  this  sport, 
which  is  also  known  of  old  time  in  Japan  and  the  Far  East 
generally. 

Among  the  Polynesians  also  kite-flying  was  by  no  means 
confined  to  children  or  youths.  In  the  Hervey  Islands,  accord- 
ing to  Mr  Gill,  kite-flying  was  in  times  of  peace  'the  great 
delight  of  aged  men,'  and  in  Hawaii  people  of  all  ages  flew 
kites,  as  was  also  the  case  in  New  Zealand  and  elsewhere. 
Codrington  tells  us  that  'kites  used  in  fishing  in  the  Solomon 
Islands  and  Santa  Cruz  are  used  as  toys  in  Bank's  Islands  and 
New  Hebrides,  although  not  commonly  of  late  years'  (135, 

19 


276  THE  CHILD 

p.  276).  Here  we  have  a  scientific  (as  it  were)  use  of  the  kite 
and  a  play-use,  comparalile  to  the  use  of  the  kite  to-day  with 
us  for  meteorological  purposes  and  its  use  in  games  by  our 
children. 

Dolls. — Dr  J.  \V.  I'cwkes,  who  has  made  a  long  and  careful 
study  of  the  rites  and  ceremonies  of  the  Pueblos  Indians,  be- 
lieves tliat 'dolls  among  civilised  nations  are  simple  survivals 
of  figurines  used  as  idols,' and  sees  in  the  'images  given  to 
little  girls'  in  certain  ceremonies  of  the  Tusayan  Indians,  a 
'  transition  stage  in  which  the  doll  still  i)reserves  the  symbolic 
marks  [these  wooden  images  invariably  bear  the  symbolism  of 
different  mythological  personages  called  ka-tci-nas  wliich  figure 
in  the  sacred  dances]  characteristic  of  the  idol.'^ 

In  an  exhaustive  study  of  the  '  Dolls  of  the  Tusayan 
Indians,'  the  same  authority  discusses  the  matter  in  great  de- 
tail. Some  of  the  facts  suggest  a  connection  between  'doll-cult 
and  ancestor-worship,'  but,  as  may  be  seen  from  the  authorities 
cited  in  the  'Study  of  Uolls  '  by  Mr  A.  C.  Ellis  and  President 
Hall,  there  is  no  general  agreement  among  ethnologists  as  to 
any  connection  between  dolls  and  religion,  mythology,  fetishes, 
emblems,  idols,  etc.,  the  majority  agreeing  with  Dr  Brinton 
that  'while  certain  dolls  may  be  made  in  the  image  of  fetishes 
or  idols,  the  sentiment  of  playing  with  dolls  seems  altogether 
too  spontaneous  and  independent  to  have  been  derived  from 
ceremonies'  (182,  p.  173).  The  variations  in  the  'doll-cult' 
with  primitive  peoples  as  among  civilised  children  are  very  great, 
while  the  antiquity  of  dolls  as  mere  toys  is  very  great,  as  the 
catacombs  of  Rome,  the  graves  of  the  ancient  Peruvians  and 
Egyptians  prove,  while,  as  Andrea  notes,  Sardes,  in  Asia  Minor, 
was  an  ancient  factory  town  of  dolls,  etc.,  just  as  Niirnberg  and 
Sonneberg  are  to-day  (8,  p.  53) ;  the  Orient  was  the  home  of 
many  dolls,  that  afterwards  found  welcome  in  Europe,  just  as 
it  was  the  native  place  of  many  of  the  gam.es  and  plays  of 
children. 

So7igs  and  Games  of  Children. — According  to  Mr  W.  W. 
Newell  (456,  p.  i),  who  has  investigated  the  '  Games  and  Songs 
of  American  Children,'  there  seems  to  be  no  doubt  that  'a 
majority  of  the  games  of  children  are  played  with  rhyme- 
formulas,  which  have  been  handed  down  from  generation  to 
generation.'  The  metre  of  some  of  the  German  children's 
songs,  Dr  Hildebrand  has  shown  (297,  p.  33),  is  of  the  oldest 
^  Amer.  Aiitlu:,  VH.  p.  38. 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE    PAST        2/7 

known  Germanic  type,  forms  of  verse  that  the  greatest  poets  of 
the  nation,  Goethe  and  Schiller,  have  often  used,  and  yet  forms 
so  ancient  and  so  characteristic  of  child-song,  that  it  might 
even  be  said  that  'we  owe  German  metre  to  the  children.' 
The  rhythm  of  '  Bauer  baue  Kessel '  is  old  as  that  of  Otfried, 
and  springs  from  the  same  source.  Tiersot,  in  his  '  History 
of  Folk-Song  in  France'  (p.  131),  notes  that  a  variant  of  the 
familiar  round  'Pont  d'Avignon,'  served  as  a  theme  for  a 
Huguenot  psalm  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  not  a  few  other 
serious  compositions  in  many  countries  go  back  to  the  naive 
simplicity  of  child-song. 

Dr  H.  Carrington  Bolton,  in  his  classic  study  of  the 
'  Counting-Out  Rhymes  of  Children,'  those  meaningless  jingles 
with  which  children  all  over  the  globe  begin  their  games  and 
make  their  decisions,  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  we  have  in 
ihem  a  notable  example  of  the  survival  in  the  usages  of 
children  of  the  serious  practices  of  adults  in  primitive  stages 
of  culture,  these  rhymes  really  representing  the  mysterious 
sortilegic  formulae  of  past  ages;  children  now  select  their 
leader  or  partner  as  once  men  selected  victims  for  sacrifice. 
This  view  has  received  wide  credence  among  folk-lorists  of 
recent  years,  but  there  is  more  than  one  argument  against  it. 
Mr  W.  W.  Newell,  the  eminent  American  folk-lorist,  holds  that 
while  these  '  childish  formulas '  may  have  arisen  from  '  a  serious 
superstition,'  the  formulas  do  not,  in  themselves,  bear  out  such 
a  theory,  it  being  quite  possible  that  '  the  meaningless  form  of 
the  rhymes  is  the  natural  result  of  transference  from  language  to 
language,  and  of  time.'  Another  point  of  importance  is  noted 
by  Mr  Newell,  viz.,  that  in  the  '  counting-out '  of  children  '  the 
selected  person  is  he  on  whom  the  lot  does  ?wt  fall,'  something 
not  characteristic  of  sacrificial  rites  and  formulae,  but  'a  usage 
for  which  there  is  an  obvious  reason  in  the  game  itself.'  The 
practice  of  '  successive  exclusions '  is  thus  characteristic  of  the 
child-procedure,  and  'the  adoption  of  syllables  instead  of  num- 
bers is  especially  intended  to  secure  fairness ;  it  is  more  diffi- 
cult to  calculate  the  result.'  If  the  'counting-out'  of  children 
has  really  originated  in  forgotten  sortilegic  rites,  it  is  clear 
that  the  child-mind,  or  some  other  influence,  has  interfered  to 
shape  it  admirably  to  the  necessities  of  its  present  employment. 
The  existence  of  these  children's  rites  side  by  side  with  the  seri- 
ous ceremonials  of  people  more  or  less  primitive,  with  no  clear 
indication  of  the  derivation  of  the  former  from  the  latter,  is  also 


2/8  TilK   CHILD 

a  point  worth  consideration  in  the  discussion  or  their  ultimate 
source.^  Nonsense  refrains  for  dances  and  similar  exercises  are 
known  all  over  the  world  in  every  stage  of  culture,  no  less  than 
among  the  children  of  civilised  men,  whose  rhymes  and  whose 
poetry  have  so  often  such  a  large  element  of  purely  unintelligible 
or  unmeaning  sounds  in  them.  Much  of  the  earliest  com- 
position of  a  literary  nature  among  primitive  people  and 
children,  quite  apart  from  rite  or  ceremony,  consists  of  'non- 
sense words  and  syllables.'  Wallaschek,  in  his  investigation 
of  '  Primitive  Music,'  and  Bolton,  in  his  study  of  '  Rhythm,' 
have  called  marked  attention  to  these  nonsense  refrains, 
chants,  jingles,  repetitions  and  spontaneous  rhythmic  utter- 
ances, common  to  primitive  man  and  the  civilised  child.  Evi- 
dence that  very  much  of  human  poetry  has  been  developed 
from  just  such  unintelligible  verse,  in  which  alliteration  and 
rhyme  often  seem  to  occur  quite  accidentally,  is  to  be  found 
not  only  in  the  great  collections  of  children's  song-games,  such 
as  those  of  Newell  and  Gomme,  or  in  the  chants  of  savage 
and  barbarous  peoples,  but  also  in  the  nonsense  refrains, 
chorus,  etc.,  of  many  of  the  hymns  and  popular  songs  of  the 
most  cultured  races  of  the  globe.  The  resemblance  between 
the  metre  of  the  poetry  of  children's  games  and  the  rhythm  of 
their  spontaneous  utterances  is  pointed  out  by  Dr  Bolton,  who 
cites  numerous  examples  in  illustration  of  the  rapprochement. 
The  ethnographic  and  ethnological  aspects  of  the  games  and 
sports  of  children  and  adults  have  been  discussed  in  the  essays 
of  Tylor,  Andree,  Culin,  etc.,  where  a  mass  of  interesting  infor- 
mation will  be  found. 

According  to  Miss  Paola  Lombroso  (369,  p.  132),  the 
classic,  traditional  plays  and  games  '  stand  in  the  same  relation 
to  those  invented  by  the  child,  as  written  tradition  does  to  irn- 
provisation.'  The  genius  of  childhood  reveals  itself  more  in 
the  latter  than  in  the  former,  which  are  so  often  transmitted 
from  generation  to  generation,  and  found  all  over  the  world  in 
but  slightly  different  form  and  fashion.  The  practical  uni- 
versality of  many  games  can  be  seen  from  a  glance  into  the 
collections  of  Pitre,  Newell,  Gomme,  Culin,  and  the  briefer 
studies  of  Tylor  and  Andree.  The  readiness  with  which 
children  of  European  ancestry  can  fall  into  the  play-life  and 
play-interests  of  the  children  of  primitive  peoples  has  been 
noted  by  many  travellers,  but  no  better  example  can  be  found 
^  Joitni.  Anier.  Folk-Lore,  I.  p.  242. 


THE  CHILD  AS  REVEALER  OF  THE  PAST   279 

than  Mrs  Rink's  account  of  the  play-activities  of  her  childhood 
among  the  Eskimo  children  of  Greenland  (253,  p.  391).  Just 
as  the  adult  savage  is  so  often  seized  with  a  passion  to  imitate 
all  the  characteristic  movements  and  actions  of  the  new-come 
white  man,  so  are  children  of  white  descent,  in  a  primitive  en- 
vironment, whenever  they  are  free  from  the  restraints  of  their 
civilised  elders,  seized  by  a  real  longing  to  act  as  their  savage 
playmates  do ;  one  touch  of  play  seems  to  make  all  the  world 
of  childhood  akin,  and  as  a  result  of  the  primitive  declaration, 
'  where  thou  art,  I  shall  be  also,'  we  see  laid  in  Greenland  the  first 
stones  of  a  new  fabric  of  civilisation  (destined  to  be  destroyed 
by  parental  interference),  which  repeats  for  us  in  some  measure 
the  first  real  break  from  social  animality.  If,  as  Guyau  tell  us, 
'  modesty  has  civilised  love '  in  the  history  of  the  race,  we  may 
say  with  some  assurance  that  '  play  has  civilised  strength  and 
knowledge.' 

Atavisms  of  Hufititig  and  Fishing. — If  there  be  anything  in 
atavisms,  the  secret  desire  and  frequent  attempts  of  children  to 
catch  birds  and  animals  with  the  naked  hands,  or  fish  with  the 
nuked  feet,  mean  a  good  deal.  Professor  O.  T.  Mason  tells 
us  that  the  boy's  method  of  hunting  and  catching  by  hand 
fish,  eggs,  young  animals,  shell-fish,  insects,  etc.,  is  the  oldest 
and  the  longest  to  survive  (as  it  does  to-day)  of  all  the  arts  of 
zootechny.  The  old  proverb,  '  A  bird  in  the  ha7id  is  worth  two 
in  the  bush,'  grew  up  quite  naturally  it  would  seem.  The 
Eskimo  have  been  known  to  catch  seals  by  the  flippers  as  they 
were  escaping  to  the  water ;  the  Wailaki  Indians  of  California, 
to  capture  rabbits  and  deer  by  running  them  down ;  the 
Micmacs,  of  Nova  Scotia,  to  run  down  a  stag  by  continual, 
unresting  pursuit ;  many  primitive  hunters  (disguised,  or  in 
some  sort  of  retreat)  capture  various  water-fowl  and  other 
birds  with  the  bare  hands.  Boys  among  the  Seri  Indians 
'run  down  flocks  of  birds,  rabbits,  and  other  swift  animals, 
bringing  contempt  on  themselves  if  they  fail ' ;  certain  Indians 
of  British  Columbia,  and  other  parts  of  North  and  South 
America,  where  fish  are  very  abundant,  capture  them  by  hand 
amid  the  shallows  and  among  the  rocks;  the  Mura,  of  the 
Amazon,  'dive  for  turtles  and  catch  them  by  the  legs';  some 
Indian  tribes  of  the  western  coast  of  the  United  States  *  catch 
turbot  and  flounders  with  their  feet';  the  Wintun  Indians,  of 
California,  dive  for  clams,  etc.  One  is  surprised  at  the  uni- 
versality of  this  method  of  capture  in  America  and  other  parts 


280  THE   CHILD 

of  the  world,  although,  of  course,  higher  and  more  developed 
methods  of  hunting  and  fishing  often  exist  alongside  it  in  the 
same  region  and  with  the  same  primitive  tribe  (413,  p.  56). 
Especially  noteworthy  in  this  direction  is  the  delight  boys  often 
take  in  chasing  animals  until  they  are  altogether  fatigued,  and 
must  perforce  give  in. 

Atavisms  of  Dress. — The  modern  civilised  man  and  woman 
at  home  or  at  leisure  often  wear  the  garb  or  the  gear  of  primi- 
tive men  and  women,  in  medias  res  or  on  their  travels. 
C'hildren  also  to-day  wear  and  use  not  a  little  of  the  dress  and 
rigging-out  of  the  earliest  races  of  mankind.  Mason  has  noted 
many  of  these  survivals  in  his  study  of  primitive  travel  and 
transportation.  The  light  shawl  on  the  arm  of  the  opera- 
goer  or  evening  visitor  goes  back  to  the  primitive  precautionary 
garment  represented  by  the  Semito-Hamitic  girdle  or  sash 
that  may  become  a  shawl  on  occasion,  the  poncho  of  the 
Latin  Americans,  etc.  The  modern  costly  walking-cane,  the 
wand  of  the  magician,  and  the  bishop's  crozier  are  all  develop- 
ments of  the  primitive  traveller's  staff,  the  stick  of  the  early 
carrier.  The  modern  child's  night-drawers  remind  us  of  the 
woman's  boots  of  the  Eskimo,  where  shoe,  legging  and  breeches 
are  continuous,  and  of  the  costumes  of  the  very  primitive 
natives  of  the  Mackenzie  River  region.  The  clog,  which  sur- 
vives in  tanneries,  is  the  result  of  the  effort  of  primitive  men 
to  keep  their  feet  dry,  and  the  high-heeled  shoes  of  actors  and 
fashionable  women  spring  ultimately  from  the  same  effort  to 
rise  above  the  inconveniences  of  wet  land,  bog  and  seashore. 
The  stocking  with  divided  toes  was  long  ago  anticipated  by 
the  roaming  tribes  of  middle  and  western  Asia.  The  '  gum- 
boots  '  which  the  climate  of  New  England  has  made  necessary 
are  quite  of  the  old  Eskimo  pattern.  The  ice-creepers,  so 
commonly  attached  to  the  soles  of  the  boots  and  shoes  in 
winter  time  in  the  New  England  States,  are  precisely  like  those 
of  the  Eskimo,  Chukchi,  Kamchadales,  etc.,  except  that  they 
are  made  of  leather  and  iron.  The  spiked  boots  of  the 
runner  and  football  player  of  to-day  find  their  counterpart  in 
the  bone-spiked  hunting  shoes  of  the  Kamchatkans.  And 
there  are  many  other  things  that  might  be  enumerated  did 
space  permit,  but  those  given  here  will  easily  suggest  other 
examples  of  heirlooms  from  primitive  man  into  the  possession 
of  which  (practically  unchanged)  the  civilised  child  of  to-day 
comes. 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE   PAST        28 1 

Modesty. — The  evolution  of  modesty  has  been  quite  recently 
treated  of  by  Havelock  Ellis  (188,  p.  135),  who  tells  us  '  that  the 
child,  though  very  bashful,  is  wholly  devoid  of  modesty,'  as  is 
abundantly  proved  by  the  shocking  '  inconvenaiice  of  children  in 
speech  and  act,'  and  by  the  '  charming  ways  in  which  they  inno- 
cently disregard  the  conventions  of  modesty  their  elders  thrust 
upon  them,  or,  even  when  anxious  to  carry  them  out,  wholly 
miss  the  point  at  issue.'  With  civilised  man,  it  thus  appears, 
'  the  convention  of  modesty  long  precedes  its  real  develop- 
ment,' which  takes  place  at  the  advent  of  puberty,  although 
modesty  is  by  no  means  altogether  of  sexual  origin.  Savage 
men,  as  Ellis  notes,  are  modest  not  only  towards  women  but 
towards  their  own  sex  as  well,  as  shown  by  seclusion  for  the 
exercise  of  natural  functions,  taboos  of  eating,  ceremonial  un- 
cleanness,  etc.  The  savage  knows  also  the  blush,  the  hang- 
ing of  the  head  and  other  phenomena  connected  with  modesty, 
for  with  him  it  often  '  possesses  the  strength  of  a  genuine  and 
irresistible  instinct,'  which  does  not  excite  the  ridicule  and  con- 
tempt it  so  often  meets  with  among  us.  It  is  among  savages 
that  people  die  for  modesty's  sake. 

There  can  hardly  be  any  close  parallelism  between  the 
child  before  puberty  and  the  lower  races  of  men  on  the  score 
of  modesty  (which,  as  ethnic  customs  prove,  is  by  no  means 
confined  to  one  particular  portion  of  the  body  alone),  but 
some  sort  of  comparisons  may  be  instituted  between  the 
clothes-lusts  of  children  and  those  of  primitive  peoples,  and 
between  their  eating  customs.  In  the  matter  of  modesty, 
generally,  it  is  the  ignorant  classes  of  our  civilised  comnmnities, 
who,  with  their  greater  possession  of  it,  will  best  bear  com- 
parison with  savage  and  barbarous  peoples. 

Progress  by  Regression. — The  irreversibility  of  regressive 
evolution — i.e.,  organs  or  institutions  that  have  disappeared 
altogether,  or  have  been  reduced  to  vestigial  conditions,  can 
never  reappear  or  develop  themselves  anew  —  is  an  idea 
supported  by  Demoor,  Massart  and  Vandervelde,  but  re- 
jected by  Mantegazza,  who  remarks  that  'pathology  and 
atavism  furnish  us  every  day  with  exceptions  to  such  a  law — 
the  reappearance  of  lost  organs  in  the  flowers  of  our  garden 
geraniums,  the  resurgence  of  the  lost  toes  of  the  horse,  the 
republicanism  of  Rome  under  Rienzi  in  the  fourteenth  century 
(democracy  of  olden  times  in  feudal  days),  the  revival  of 
antiquity  (educational  and  scientific)  in  the  Renaissance,  the 


282  THE   CHILD 

Romanesque  characters  of  the  French  Constitution  and  Govern- 
ment during  the  Revolution  epoch,  the  revival  in  1S96  of  the 
Olympian  games  after  fifteen  hundred  years,  were  not  all  of 
them  mere  superficial  imitations,  passing  whims  or  fads ;  the 
institution  was  not  able  to  live  in  a  radically  transformed 
environment.'  The  real  conclusion  to  be  drawn  is  that 
*  regression  never  really  is  a  return  to  the  primitive  condition ' 
(398,  p.  251).  The  cause  of  regressive  evolution  the  authors 
see  in  'the  limitation  of  the  means  of  subsistence'  (food  for 
the  organisms,  capital  and  strength  of  labour  for  societies),  a 
theory,  which,  as  Mantegazza  says,  is  not  large  enough,  nor 
worthy  enough  for  evolution.  Regression,  atrophy,  disap- 
pearance of  one  organ  or  institution,  mean  new  aims,  new 
possibilities,  new  acquisitions,  new  perfection,  new  evolution — 
the  reject  is  certain  evidence  of  the  higher  project.  Function 
(though  it  needs  food)  is  more  than  food,  and  the  mind  of 
man  is  not  threatened  eternally  by  famine.  As  old  Sir  Thomas 
Browne  said  long  ago:  'There  is  surely  a  piece  of  divinity  in 
us ' ;  and  this  '  piece  of  divinity  '  rules  all — the  harmony  of 
man  with  the  laws  of  the  universe.  Regression  is  the  sign  of 
progression,  not  the  evidence  of  failing  nutrition. 

The  very  common  opinion  that  regression  always  takes 
place  in  the  inverse  order  of  progressive  evolution  (an  idea 
favoured  by  the  etymology  of  the  words)  is  rejected  by  these 
authors,  as  not  justified  by  the  facts  of  botany,  zoology  and 
sociology,  where  there  are  too  many  instances  of  the  truth  that 
the  disappearance  of  a  useless  organ,  and  not  the  manner  in 
which  it  vanishes,  is  the  point  of  importance,  to  allow  the 
prevalence  of  such  a  general  and  absolute  law.  Moreover, 
variation  does  not  seem  to  follow  laws  that  are  fixed  and  forms 
that  are  immutable,  and  while  the  more  recent  acquisitions  do 
sometimes  disappear  the  first,  it  has  yet  to  be  shown  that  the 
persistent  portions  disappear  in  the  inverse  order  of  their 
formation,  or  that  the  vanished  parts  reappear  once  more 
never  to  return.  The  plant-world  seems  to  furnish  the  least 
evidence  of  'regression  in  the  inverse  order  of  formation,'  and 
in  the  animal  world  stability  and  complexit)'',  strength  of 
stimulus  and  action  of  environment,  rather  than  order  of  origin 
or  of  formation,  seem  to  determine  the  disappearances  and 
the  reappearances  of  biological  characters.  With  man,  as 
Mantegazza  points  out  in  his  review  of  the  book  under  dis- 
cussion, we  meet  with  similar  contrasting  phenomena  (398,  p. 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE   PAST        283 

251):  'In  some  cases  the  most  recent  institutions  disappear  the 
first,  while  the  most  ancient  last  the  longest ;  but  in  other  cases 
just  the  opposite  happens.  We  know  that  legislative,  juridical 
and  religious  changes  follow  very  long  after,  never  precede, 
the  transformations  of  the  economic,  family,  or  moral  order. 
Tarde  has  said  that  imitation  happens  from  within  outwards, 
i.e.,  aims  and  sentiments  are  imitated  before  their  means  and 
expressions.  These  last  (usages,  laws  or  ceremonies  of 
religion)  are  more  recent  than  the  profound  changes  to  which 
they  correspond,  and  yet,  in  cases  of  regressive  evolution,  they 
are  not  sure  to  be  the  first  to  disappear.  Titles  and  heraldry 
survive  the  nobility.  Houses  were  considered  movable  long 
after  the  disorganisation  of  the  nomad  tribes,  whose  tent-life 
has  made  them  adopt  that  legal  idea.' 

The  history  of  the  various  views  that  have  been  held  by 
different  authorities  as  to  the  significance  of  the  metopic 
suture  forms  an  interesting  chapter  in  the  literature  of  re- 
gressive evolution,  or  progressive  atavism.  Talbot,  in  his  study 
of  Degeneracy  (625,  p.  162),  considers  the  synostosis,  or  com- 
plete obliteration  of  the  frontal  suture,  '  normal  and  in  the  line 
of  advance.'  The  earlier  writers,  generally,  like  Blumenbach, 
Hyrtl,  etc.,  looked  upon  its  persistence  as  an  arrest  of  develop- 
ment merely  or  as  theromorphic.  Welcker,  however,  in  1862, 
and  Anutschin,  in  1880,  sought  to  connect  it  with  greater 
brain  development  and  intelligence,  both  individual  and 
racially,  a  view  glimpsed  by  Hunault,  in  1740,  who,  however, 
linked  with  strong  brain-growth  weak  and  defective  bony 
development.  At  present,  '  metopism,'  the  persistence  more 
or  less  even  to  adult  life,  of  the  frontal  or  metopic  suture,  the 
consolidation  of  which  leads  to  the  formation  of  the  char- 
acteristic unitary  frontal  bone  of  the  human  skull,  is  a  subject 
of  increasing  importance.  The  question  of  piscine  or  reptilian 
atavism  has  been  driven  into  the  background  by  the  new 
question  of  progressive  evolution.  Papillault's  very  recent 
essay,  the  material  for  which  was  furnished  by  ninety  metopic 
crania  from  the  catacombs  of  Paris,  maintains  that  the  per- 
sistence of  the  suture  in  question  is  due  to  a  cerebral  superiority, 
the  prime  cause  of  which  originates  in  the  brain  itself.  Metopic 
skulls,  according  to  Papillault,  show  a  greater  development  in 
the  regions  corresponding  to  the  cerebral  hemispheres,  and 
the  increase  of  relative  brain-weight  apparently  accompanying 
this    is    but   one   of   the   numerous   marks    of    morphologic 


2S4  THE   CHILD 

superiority  such  crania  possess.  As  a  result  of  numerous 
measurements,  both  of  metopic  and  non-metopic  slculls,  the 
author  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  the  cause  of  metopism  lies 
in  the  brain  itself,  viz.,  'a  growth  in  width  of  the  cerebral 
lobes,  exerting  upon  the  skull  a  centrifugal  pressure,  and 
keeping  the  two  frontal  bones  separated.'  Although  one  can- 
not as  yet  dogmatise  upon  the  matter,  the  evidence  seems  to 
point  to  a  relation  between  metopism  and  increased  intelli- 
gence ;  the  relative  superiority  in  brain-weight,  however,  may 
go  either  with  a  really  better  developed  intellect,  or  (without 
change  of  intelligence)  with  a  shorter  stature  (the  Negritos,  a 
small-statured  people,  e.g.,  offer  frequent  cases  of  metopism) ; 
the  metopic  may  thus,  seemingly,  approach  the  woman  or  the 
child.  According  to  Papillault,  woman  is  not  as  much  more 
metopic  than  man,  as  might  be  perhaps  expected,  on  account 
of  the  development  of  the  female  brain  in  the  inferior  portions, 
which,  in  a  way,  relieve  the  pressure  noted  above. 

Buschan,  like  Papillault,  looks  upon  'metopism,'  which  he 
notes  as  being  present  among  the  lower  races  of  the  world  in 
the  proportion  of  some  2  per  cent.,  while  in  the  various  peoples 
of  white  European  stock  the  ratio  is  much  higher,  5.9  per  cent, 
to  12.5  per  cent.,  as  a  sign  of  intellectual  superiority,  not  an 
atavistic  inferiority.  Far  from  being  due  to  excessive  weak- 
ness of  the  frontal  bones,  the  persistence  of  the  frontal  suture 
is  evidence  of  the  very  active  growth  of  the  cerebral  hemi- 
spheres. 

The  metopic  suture,  favoured  by  the  growth  of  culture  and 
human  social  sympathies,  may  in  the  future  play  a  highly 
important  ro/e  in  the  history  of  the  race.  It  is  a  marked 
example  of  a  variation  (by  many  called  an  atavism),  which  the 
advancing  civilisation  of  mankind  is  bound  to  allow  to  come 
to  full  fruition.  To  use  the  significant  words  of  Papillault : 
'  Civilisation,  by  multiplying  and  strengthening  the  bonds  of 
social  soHdarity,  by  augmenting,  in  the  struggle  of  interests, 
the  ro/e  of  intelligence,  and  diminishing,  in  the  chances  of 
success,  the  primitively  preponderating  influence  of  brute 
strength,  permits  the  weak  who  are  intellectually  well-endowed 
to  live  and  to  prosper,  and  thus  becomes  one  of  the  most 
powerful  factors  of  metopism.' 

The  new  altruistic  struggle  for  existence  in  the  human  race 
is  destined,  evidently,  to  make  use  of  many  other  phenomena 
also,  whose  occurrence  in  man  has  been  regarded  as  'mere 


THE   CHILD   AS   REVEALER   OF   THE   PAST        285 

atavisms,'  in  ways  that  were  not  possible  under  the  old  law  of 
the  survival  of  the  strongest  in  the  physical  sense  of  the  term. 
He  who  now  is  able  to  survive  by  reason  of  his  social  fitness 
will  be  able  to  utilise  or  re-use  innumerable  devices  which 
nature  abandoned  in  the  brute  struggle  of  the  distant  past. 


A  YOUNG   BARBARIAN 
(A  Pueblo  Indian  Girl,  aged  about  15,  from  Rep.  U.S.  Nat.  Mus.,  Vol.  VIII.). 


CHAPTER   VIII 

THE   CHILD    AND    THE    SAVAGE 

Man  and  the  Animals. — Mme.  Clemence  Royer,  in  her  study 
of  the  Origin  of  Man  and  of  Societies,  pubhshed  nearly  thirty 
years  ago  (556,  p.  95),  remarked  that  man  is  distinguished 
from  the  animals  only  by  a  more  extensive  gamut  of  passions 
and  more  varied  instinctive  nature  :  '  His  mind  is  at  bottom 
just  the  same  instrument  whose  mechanism  does  not  differ 
from  that  of  the  animal ;  it  is  a  more  extensive  key-board  on 
which,  instead  of  getting  a  few  unconnected  sounds  and 
elementary  harmonies,  expressing  a  restricted  number  of  ideas 
and  of  feelings,  he  obtains  more  and  more  complicated 
harmonies,  more  and  more  composite  melodies,  more  and 
more  varied  rhythms,  and  so  on  up  to  the  marvellous  sym- 
phonies of  thought  and  of  passion.' 

Professor  Wesley  Mills,  who  likewise  holds  that  '  no  small 
part  of  our  psychic  life  differs  from  that  of  animals  rather  in 
degree  than  in  kind,'  observes  also  that  'many  of  the  per- 
formances of  the  lower  animals,  if  accomplished  by  men,  would 
be  regarded  as  indications  of  the  possession  of  marvellous  genius ' 
(427,  pp.  16,  13),  that  indeed  'there  is  not  a  single  sense  that 
man  possesses  in  which  he  is  not  excelled  by  some  one  animal, 
often  immeasurably.' 

The  performances  of  homing  pigeons,  the  migration  of 
birds,  the  response  of  the  dog  to  human  language,  the  per- 
severance of  the  cat  and  its  independence,  the  sensibility  of 
sheep  and  other  domestic  animals  to  approaching  atmospherical 
changes,  the  achievements  of  the  beaver,  the  horse,  and  the 
elephant  of  the  dog  and  of  less  known  and  less  noticed 
animals,   the   musical  talents  of  some   of  the   rodents,   etc., 

287 


288  THE   CHILD 

are  all  wonderful  in  a  way,  but  there  is  still  reason,  perhaps, 
for  halting  between  two  opinions.  Professor  Mills  observes 
(427,  p.  22):  'If  the  highest  among  dogs,  apes  and  elephants 
be  eonipared  with  the  lowest  among  savage  tribes,  the  balance, 
whether  mental  or  moral,  will  not  be  very  largely  in  man's 
favour — indeed,  in  many  cases,  the  reverse.' 

Professor  Mills  believes  that  while  such  animals  as  the  dog 
and  the  cat  'run  through  the  main  stages  of  their  psychic  life 
very  much  more  rapidly  than  the  child,'  yet,  'apart  from  the 
use  of  language  and  the  special  peculiarities  of  the  psychic 
activity  dependent  on  this,  there  is  a  closer  resemblance — :it 
all  events,  if  we  restrict  our  comparisons  to  unlettered,  and 
especially  uncivilised,  men — than  most  persons  would  suspect, 
or,  owing  to  prejudices,  would  be  inclined  to  admit'  {427, 
p.  13).  The  dog,  the  kitten  and  the  child  at  certain  periods 
of  their  existence  are  remarkably  close  together.  Professor 
Mills  goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  '  many  dogs  do  really  know 
their  names  in  the  same  sense  as  very  young  children,  if  not 
even  in  a  higher  sense'  (427,  p.  34),  that  'the  capacity  of 
animals  to  communicate  with  each  other  by  a  language  of  their 
own  is  much  under-estimated'  (427,  p.  39),  and  that  'it  is 
scarcely  possible  to  account  for  the  conduct  of  the  horse,  dog, 
elephant  and  ape,  under  certain  circumstances,  without 
believing  that  they  have  the  power  to  generalise  upon 
details.' 

Professor  Lester  F.  Ward  (675,  p.  242)  holds  that  man  is 
'simply  the  most  favoured  of  all  the  "favoured  races"  that 
have  struggled  up  from  a  remote  and  humble  origin,'  and  his 
superiority  '  is  due  almost  exclusively  to  his  extraordinary 
brain  development.'  Dr  Ward  thinks  also  that  'if  the 
developed  brain  had  been  awarded  to  any  one  of  the  other 
animals  of  nearly  the  same  size  as  man,  that  animal  would 
have  dominated  the  earth  in  much  the  same  way  that  man 
does,'  for  'a  large  part  of  what  constitutes  the  physical 
superiority  of  man  is  directly  due  to  his  brain  development.' 
The  achievements  of  this  animal  would  have  been  entirely 
different  from  those  of  man,  but  they  '  would  have  had  the  same 
rank  and  secured  for  that  race  the  same  mastery  over  animate 
and  inanimate  nature.' 

Professor  S.  N.  Patten  (476,  p.  116)  thinks  that  the  'rapid 
progress '  of  man  may  have  blocked  the  way  for  any  '  increase 
in  the  intelligence  of  the  lower  animals,'  and  that  '  it  is  not  pro- 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  289 

bable  that  the  growth  of  inteUigence  would  have  ceased  if  man 
had  been  destroyed  by  some  misfortune.'  The  opposition  of 
interests  between  man  and  the  other  animals  is  one  great 
factor  in  causing  the  '  wide  gulf  now  existing  between  them.' 
In  other  words,  '  the  rapid  progress  of  the  human  species  does 
not  seem  to  have  been  due  to  any  inherent  superiority,  but 
results  from  conditions  giving  to  it  a  better  series  of  requisites 
for  survival  than  other  animals  have  had.'  Some  of  the  other 
animals,  indeed,  'the  carnivora  and  ungulata,  seem  at  one 
time  to  have  had,  in  this  respect,  an  advantage  over  the 
ancestors  of  men.'  Indeed,  were  it  not  for  'obstacles  delaying 
progress  until  the  proper  requisites  for  survival  were  found,' 
we  might  reasonably  expect  that  '  the  older  species  would  be  the 
most  advanced  and  have  the  most  intelligence.'  Man's  ability 
to  survive  in  new  environments,  whose  new  requisites  for 
survival  cause  'knowledge  to  come  by  leaps  and  bounds,'  is 
the  measure  of  his  progress. 

The  ethical  and  juridical  aspects  of  man's  relations  with  the 
animal  world  in  the  course  of  his  progress  from  savagery  to 
civilisation  have  been  well  studied  by  Bregenzer,  who,  how- 
ever, exaggerates  somewhat  when  he  concludes  that  'the 
popular  ideas  concerning  the  relation  of  men  to  animals  are, 
after  all,  at  the  root  of  philosophical  theories.'  Animal-worship, 
totemism,  sacrifice,  domestication,  reveal  facts  which  go  to 
show  how,  from  primitive  animism,  the  starting-point  of  all 
religious  development,  man  has  risen  towards  a  monistic  con- 
ception of  nature,  in  which  animals,  no  less  than  children  and 
women — both  of  whom  in  ages  past  had  but  few  inherent 
privileges — have  'rights.'  From  the  domestication  of  animals 
sprang  love  for  them,  and  love  leads  to  law,  though  here,  as 
everywhere  else,  contempt  and  hate  often  insinuate  themselves  ; 
love  and  monism  have  waxed  together,  both  man  and  beast 
have  suffered  most  when  dualism  and  anthropocentrism  ruled 
in  matters  of  religion.  The  child  in  presence  of  a  pet  animal, 
or  even  a  gentle  wild  one,  represents  a  past  age  of  humanity  in 
which  fear  readily  passed  into  love  and  that  contact  of  life  and 
life  out  of  which  ethics  has  grown  was  all-powerful.  Presum- 
ably woman  and  the  young  of  slaughtered  or  captured  animah 
came  early  into  relations  with  each  other,  and  some  of  the 
'taming' of  the  'gentler  sex 'was  accomplished  through  the 
domestication  of  creatures  lower  in  the  scale  of  animal 
being. 


290  THE    CHILD 

Instinct  and  Reason. — G.  Bikclcs,  who  has  made  a  com- 
parative study  of  the  facts  in  Wailz's  Anthropologic  and 
Brehm's  T/iier/eben,  with  a  view  to  discovering  what  feehngs  and 
emotions  arc  common  to  primitive  man  and  to  animals,  con- 
cludes that  the  basic  feelings  are  :  Love  of  parents  fur  their 
offspring,  jealousy,  attachmtnt  to  place  of  birth,  effort  for 
social  life  together,  sympathy,  desire  after  power,  collecting 
impulse,  vanity,  and  revenge.  From  the  vanity  of  animals 
have  arisen  in  man  honour,  respect,  reverence,  piety  and  shame 
(from  consideration  of  suffering  affecting  vanity  and  honour) ; 
hope  has  grown  out  of  the  anxiety  of  man  for  the  future, 
remorse  out  of  transient  feelings  of  aversion,  and  justice  out  of 
blood-revenge  (55). 

Instinct  and  reason,  the  ways  of  thinking  of  the  animal  and 
of  the  man,  have,  according  to  l)e  Mortillet,  no  fundamental 
difference,  the  divergence  being  one  of  degree  only,  not  one  of 
kind.  Mathias  Duval's  discovery  of  the  amoebism.of  animal 
cells  and  Flechsig's  doctrine  of  association-centres  promise, 
according  to  Dr  Laloy,  to  solve  the  problem  of  the  mechanism 
of  thought  in  such  a  way  as  to  recognise  the  essential  oneness 
of  reason  and  instinct,  the  greater  tendency  to  persist  and 
become  hereditary  in  the  associations,  caused  by  the  greater 
stiffness  and  difficulty  of  movement  in  the  prolongations  of  the 
nerve-cells  in  animals,  as  compared  with  man,  being  sufficient, 
perhaps,  to  explain  the  difference.^  The  oneness  of  reason 
(which  is  only  a  refined  form  of  instinct)  and  instinct  has  also 
been  recognised  by  Marshall.  Making  the  very  justifiable 
condition  that  '  in  no  case  may  we  interpret  an  action  as  the 
outcome  of  a  higher  psychic  factor,  if  it  can  be  interpreted  as  the 
outcome  of  one  which  stands  lower  in  the  psychological  scale,' 
Professor  Lloyd  Morgan  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  '  the  pro- 
babilities are  that  animals  do  not  reason,'  that  their  memory 
is  'entirely  of  the  desultory  type,'  that,  although  they  show 
'sense  of  the  lapse  of  time,'  systematic  memory  is  beyond 
their  reach.  Animals  thus  may  be  said  to  be  '  without  the 
perception  of  relations  and  the  faculty  of  reason.'  Man,  who 
is  intelligent  and  rational,  'has  not  left  behind  him  the 
emotions  of  his  animal  nature;  he  has  realised  and  purified 
them.' 

And  civilised  man  has  proceeded  likewise  with  the  heritage 
of  his  savage  ancestors.  The  demonstration  and  elucidation 
1  V Aiitkropologie,  X.  p.  218. 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  291 

of  this  idealisation  and  purification,  the  'growth  of  the  soul  of 
man,'  has  lately  been  taken  up  by  Dr  G.  Stanley  Hall  in 
connection  with  the  '  Child  Study '  movement  in  America. 

The  Child  and  the  Savage. — That  the  child,  in  many  re- 
spects, resembles  the  savage  is  an  idea  familiar  even  to  some 
of  the  writers  of  antiquity,  who  saw  that  the  childhood  of  the 
race  and  the  childhood  of  the  individual  had  not  a  few  things 
in  common.  Lucretius,  Vitruvius,  Diodorus  Siculus,  and 
other  poets  and  philosophers  ancient  and  modern,  agree  with 
Shelley,  who  summed  up  the  question  epigrammatically  in  his 
brief  declaration,  'the  savage  is  to  ages  what  the  child  is  to 
years.' 

For  Miss  Paola  Lombroso,  whose  Essays  hi  Child  Psycho- 
logy is  one  of  the  most  interesting  books  about  the  child  we 
possess:  'The  child  is  a  little  compressed,  synthetic  picture 
of  all  the  stages  of  man's  evolution  ' — an  evolution  which  has 
been  controlled  in  all  its  history  by  the  same  principle,  '  the 
adaptation  to  life  with  the  least  effort,'  the  'pulsing  eurhythmia 
that  rules  all  things'  (369,  p.  172). 

In  his  introduction  to  this  book  Professor  Cesare  Lombroso 
speaks  of  childhood  as  a  '  curious  world,  in  which  we  get 
glimpses  of  primitive  man — in  mental  development,  in  the 
emotions,  in  impulsivity,  in  the  prevalence  of  imagination 
over  intelligence.'  Before  their  dear  little  heads,  he  says,  '  we 
forget  the  cruelty  and  harshness  of  the  age  so  primitive  re- 
evoked  in  them,  and  get  the  impression  not  so  much  of  a 
savage  forest,  as  of  a  garden  of  primitive  flowers  which  smile  at 
us  and  pleasure  us  even  when  they  prick  us  or  entrap  our  feet' 
(369,  p.  ix.). 

Thoreau,  the  Rousseau  of  New  England — 'the  bachelor  of 
Nature '  he  has  been  called — a  man  in  whom  the  savage  and 
the  genius,  the  gipsy  and  the  child,  all  met,  was  an  ideal 
savage  'crusading  the  woods  in  perennial  quest  of  a  new 
sylvan  Jerusalem,'  and  living  a  life  so  naively  primitive,  that, 
as  one  of  his  biographers  observes,  his  existence  almost  seems 
'a  myth.'  This  great  nature-lover  came  very  near  to  the 
heart  of  childhood,  and  he  has  described  some  of  its  keenest 
delights  with  a  master  pen.  He  thus  tells  the  story  of  the 
house:  'Adam  and  Eve,  according  to  the  fable,  wore  the 
bower  before  other  clothes.  Man  wanted  a  home,  a  place  of 
warmth,  or  comfort,  first  of  physical  warmth,  then  the  warmth 
of  the  affections.     We  may  imagine  a  time  when,  in  the  infancy 

20 


292  THE   CHILD 

of  the  human  race,  some  enterprising  mortal  crept  into  a 
hollow  in  a  rock  for  shelter.  Every  child  begins  the  world 
again,  to  some  extent,  and  loves  to  stay  outdoors,  even  in  wet 
and  cold.  It  plays  house  as  well  as  horse,  having  an  instinct 
for  it. 

'  Who  does  not  remember  the  interest  with  which,  when 
young,  he  looked  at  shelving  rocks,  or  any  approach  to  a 
cave?  It  was  the  natural  yearning  of  that  portion  of  our  most 
primitive  ancestor  which  still  survived  in  us.  From  the  cave 
we  have  advanced  to  roofs  of  palm  leaves,  of  bark  and  boughs, 
of  linen  woven  and  stretched,  of  grass  and  straw,  of  boards 
and  shingles,  of  stones  and  tiles.  At  last  we  know  not  what 
it  is  to  live  in  the  open  air,  and  our  lives  are  domestic  in  more 
senses  than  we  think.  From  the  hearth  to  the  field  is  a  great 
distance.  It  would  be  well,  perhaps,  if  we  were  to  spend 
more  of  our  days  and  nights  without  any  obstruction  between 
us  and  the  celestial  bodies,  if  the  poet  did  not  speak  so  much 
from  under  a  roof,  or  the  saint  dwell  there  so  long.  Birds  do 
not  sing  in  caves,  nor  do  doves  cherish  their  innocence  in 
dovecots'  (638,  p.  26). 

Tlie  Savage  and  the  Ignorant. — Not  all  students  of  human 
history  and  inquirers  into  the  psychic  phenomena  of  existing 
races  are,  however,  prepared  to  admit  a  parallel  between 
the  mind  of  the  savage  and  that  of  the  child.  Ur  D.  G. 
Brinton,  the  eminent  Americanist,  whose  volume  on  the  Re- 
ligions of  Primitive  Peoples  is  the  best  presentation  of  the 
phenomena  of  religion  as  found  among  the  lower  races  that 
we  possess  as  yet,  expressed  himself  in  these  terms  (77,  pp.  12 
and  14) :  '  The  savage  state  was  the  childhood  of  the  race,  and 
by  some  the  mind  of  the  savage  has  been  likened  to  that  of  the 
child.  But  the  resemblance  is  merely  superficial.  It  rather 
resembles  that  of  the  uncultivated  and  ignorant  adult  among 
ourselves.  The  same  inaccurate  observation  and  illogical 
modes  of  thought  characterise  both.' 

As  serving  to  explain  '  most  of  the  absurdities  of  primitive 
religions,'  Dr  Brinton  emphasises  two  traits,  'common  in 
civilised  conditions,  but  universal  in  savagery,'  viz.,  the 
accepting  of  an  idea  as  true  'without  the  process  of  logical 
reasoning  or  inductive  observation,'  and  '  the  extreme  nervous 
susceptibility  of  savages.' 

The  comparison  of  primitive  peoples  with  the  ignorant 
peasantry  of  Europe,  or  the  ignorant  lower  classes  of  other 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  293 

countries,  has  been  made  by  other  observers  as  well.  Manou- 
vrier,^  says  of  the  Galibis  of  Guiana,  some  of  whom  he  studied 
at  the  Jardin  d'Acclimatation  in  Paris,  that  they  resembled 
'peasants  confined  in  the  mountains,  leading  a  simple,  mono- 
tonous life,  deprived  of  all  instruction,'  and  that,  'if  they  were 
to  settle  among  Europeans,  as  the  most  ignorant  French 
peasants  do  in  the  large  cities,  many  of  them  would  soon  be 
on  a  level  with  these  latter.'  M.  Dally  -  argues  that  the  '  total 
absence  of  curiosity,  and  of  demands  other  than  those  for  food 
and  drink '  distinguishes  them  from  the  peasantry,  who  would 
have  admired  a  hundred  things  and  asked  a  thousand  ques- 
tions. It  is  not  certain,  however,  that  the  confusion  noted 
in  these  Indians  is  any  evidence  of  lack  of  curiosity  or 
inability  to  admire,  when  environmentally  at  ease.  The 
comparison,  here,  lies  more  with  the  child,  perhaps,  than  with 
the  peasant. 

Variety  in  Savage  Character. — It  has  been  well  said  of 
primitive  peoples  that  'it  is  as  hard  to  know  them  as  it 
is  to  know  children,'  and  both  are  just  as  shallow  and 
just  as  deep  in  their  knowledge.  Absolute  trust,  comrade- 
ship, absence  of  guile  and  overreaching,  sympathy  with 
habits,  customs,  prejudices  and  superstitions,  careful  avoid- 
ance of  all  giving  offence,  display  of  interest  in  the  things  really 
important  to  savage  and  barbaric  life,  are  the  pass-words  by 
which  travellers  of  truly  scientific  bent  have  entered  into  the 
realities  of  primitive  man's  thoughts  and  actions,  and  the  same 
keys  open  all  the  doors  of  childhood.  Topinard  has  sketched 
in  brief  outline  some  of  the  chief  facts  concerning  the  un- 
civilised races  of  man,  about  whom  there  is  so  much  mis- 
conception abroad  in  the  land  (646,  p.  520)  :  'The  lowest 
savages  differ  in  character,  disposition  and  manners  accord- 
ing to  the  more  or  less  difiicult  conditions  of  existence  in 
which  they  are  found,  and  according  as  they  have  more  or 
less  connection  with  other  men,  savages  or  Europeans,  who 
stimulate  or  falsify  their  character.  In  himself,  the  savage 
is  usually  gentle,  kind,  of  an  easy  disposition,  and  with  a 
tendency  to  jollity.  He  is  honest,  does  not  lie,  and  attempts 
to  do  no  harm  either  to  his  own  people  or  to  strangers.  He  is 
sensible  to  kindnesses  which  have  been  extended  to  him,  well- 
wishing,    and   endowed   with   a   goodly   portion   of  altruism. 

1  Bull.  Soc.  (TAnthr.  de  Paris,  1882,  p.  814. 
^  Ibid.,  p.  S03. 


294  THE   CHILD 

Distrustful,  like  animals  who  sec  for  the  first  time  a  creature 
which  they  do  not  know,  his  second  impulse  is  that  of  gentle- 
ness. Nevertheless,  he  is  quick  and  violent  in  responding  to 
impressions,  and  may  abandon  himself  to  regrettable  acts,  but 
he  quickly  regains  his  natural  tendency  and  grants  pardon 
when  the  offence  has  not  been  too  grave.  Before  marriage  the 
girls  and  boys  come  early  under  the  sway  of  the  sexual  instinct, 
and  yield  to  it  neither  more  nor  less  than  in  our  civilised 
countries.  The  savage  woman  is  chaste  and  modest,  although 
nude.  Her  parents  carefully  watch  her ;  she  will  have  one 
lover  or  several,  or  she  will  be  debauched ;  if  in  the  first  case 
she  has  a  child,  public  opinion  requires  that  the  youth  should 
marry  her  and  take  charge  of  the  offspring.  After  marriage, 
the  couple  are  faithful  in  the  same  degree  that  they  are  in  our 
modern  societies,  if  not  more  so.  The  husband  always  keeps 
the  same  woman.' 

The  forest  Veddahs  of  Ceylon,  about  whom  the  brothers 
Sarasin  have  recently  written  so  interestingly,  are  one  of  the 
few  peoples  in  the  world  who  may  be  considered  fairly  prim- 
itive, and  illustrate  the  generalities  of  Topinard's  description; 
some  of  the  milder  tribes  of  South  American  Indians,  African 
Negroes  and  natives  of  the  Pacific  Islands  belong  in  the  same 
category. 

Primitive  Man  and  Modern  Savages. — An  extreme  view  of 
the  general  character  of  primitive  man  is  presented  by  Mr 
Talcolt  Williams  in  his  paper  '  Was  Primitive  Man  a  Modern 
Savage  ? '  Mr  Williams  (684,  p.  542)  questions  the  common 
opinion  of  the  '  progress  of  man  as  beginning  with  a  savage — 
bestial,  degraded  and  repulsive,  lower  than  the  lowest  now 
known — passing  upward  through  incessant  centuries  of  savage 
warfare  in  which  each  worse  stage  has  been  succeeded  by  a 
better,  all  finding  their  reflex  and  counterpart  in  the  grim  and 
bloody  record  of  the  anthropologist,  which  has  in  it  many 
savage  infernos,  but  no  primeval  Eden.'  It  is  a  mistaken  idea, 
so  Mr  Williams  thinks,  to  hold  that  'the  savage  of  the  youth 
does  not  materially  differ  from  the  savage  of  the  maturity  of 
the  race,'  and  that  the  lowest  savage  of  to-day  represents  the 
earliest  savage  of  the  past,  that  '  the  modern  savage  explains 
primitive  man.'  The  condition  of  many  of  the  savage  peoples 
to-day  is  largely  due  to  pressure,  and  often  to  the  contiguity  of 
civilisation,  and  to  these  '  both  the  savage  and  the  barbarian 
owe  their  worst  qualities.'     The  Polynesian  suffers  from  'the 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  295 

pressure  of  exiguous  insular  territory ' ;  the  Malaysian  from 
'  hostile  inter-tribal  pressure  stimulated  by  the  ease  of  water- 
communication  in  an  island  and  tropical  world ' ;  the  Eskimo 
from  '  Arctic  pressure/  etc.  According  to  Mr  Williams, 
'  Peace,  not  war,  would  be  the  normal  condition  of  these  ante- 
cedent communities  in  which  the  flower  of  savage  life  was 
setting  into  barbarism,  and  slowly  fruiting  into  civilisation.' 
The  earliest  culture  caught  its  tone  from  peace,  and  no  era 
of  conquest  had  yet  appeared,  and  communication  was  prob- 
ably freer  than  in  later  epochs  of  war  and  conquest.  Much  is 
signified  by  the  fact  that  '  everywhere  the  war-god  is  the 
younger  god,  not  the  older,  as  perpetual  war  would  have  made 
him.' 

Doubtless,  Mr  Williams  has  drawn  a  picture  of  the  earliest 
men  which,  except  in  so  far  as  war  is  concerned,  will  not  meet 
with  the  approval  of  many  modern  anthropologists,  still  less 
with  that  of  those  who,  holding  to  the  parallel  of  the  individual 
and  the  race,  seek  to  explain  all  the  pugnacity  and  the  'fighting 
instinct '  of  childhood  as  inheritances  from  a  primitive  era  of 
continual  warfare  and  intertribal,  interfamilial,  inter-individual 
struggle. 

Dr  D.  G.  Brinton  ^  rejects  Mr  Williams's  views,  with  the 
declaration  that  the  'author  is  about  a  century  behind  time,  as 
every  student  of  the  actual  remains  of  earliest  man  knows  the 
painful  and  irrefutable  evidence  of  his  worse  than  barbarous, 
his  really  brutal  condition,  apart  from  all  comparisons  with 
modern  savages.' 

There  is  much  truth  in  Dr  Brinton's  contention,  which  is 
the  view  of  those  who  do  not,  with  Major  Powell  (505,  p.  103), 
deny  the  progress  of  humanity  from  militancy  to  industrialism, 
from  perpetual  warfare  to  more  or  less  stable  peaceful  activity. 
Major  Powell  and  his  school  reject  the  theory  that  '  savagery 
is  a  state  of  perpetual  warfare ;  that  the  life  of  the  savage  is 
one  of  ceaseless  bloodshed;  that  the  men  of  this  earliest  stage 
of  culture  live  but  to  kill  and  devour  one  another;  and  that 
infanticide  is  the  common  practice.'  War  itself,  has,  like  all 
other  human  institutions,  'developed  from  very  lowly  begin- 
nings to  an  advanced  stage  of  organisation.'  Social  growths 
preceded  the  advance  from  the  bow  and  arrow  to  the  Catling 
gun,  from  the  stone  club  to  the  Mauser  rifle,  from  the  canoe 
to  the  modern  battleship ;  great  wars  were  posterior  to  great 
1  Science,  N.S.,  IX.  p.  38. 


296  THE   CHILD 

peoples.  The  wars  of  savagery  were  but  small  interruptions  of 
pursuits  of  peace,  and  probably  no  wars  of  barbaric  peoples 
the  world  ever  knew  were  so  destructive  or  carried  on  on  so  large 
a  scale  as  have  been  some  of  the  wars  of  civilised  nations. 
The  theory  of  evolution,  and  man  as  an  intellectual  animal, 
may  be  held  to  predicate,  for  the  earliest  known  world  of 
human  beings,  group  upon  group  of  savages,  scattered  over  all 
the  habitable  earth,  out  of  whose  peaceful  efforts  the  beginnings 
of  art,  science  and  religion  arose,  and  from  whose  clashings 
and  combinings  in  later  ages  the  peculiarities  of  the  first 
civilisations  and  their  successors  were  produced. 

Mental  Character  of  certain  Primitive  Peoples. — Mr  Curr's 
estimate  of  the  Aborigines  of  Australia  is  as  follows  (136,  I. 
p.  42) :  '  The  mental  characteristics  of  the  blacks  are  worthy  of 
notice.  The  black,  especially  in  his  wild  state,  is  quicker 
in  the  action  of  his  mind,  more  observant  and  more  self-reliant 
than  the  English  peasant,  but  less  steady,  persevering  and 
calculating.  His  mind  in  many  respects  is  that  of  a  child.  In 
our  aboriginal  schools  it  has  been  found  that  the  pupil 
masters  reading,  writing  and  arithmetic  more  quickly  than  the 
English  child.  He  will  also  amuse  himself  with  reading  stories 
as  long  as  he  is  under  the  influence  of  the  whites ;  and  avail 
himself  of  his  writing  to  correspond  with  his  absent  friends. 
He  also  shows  a  liking  for  pictures,  with  which  he  loves  to 
adorn  the  walls  of  his  hut.  At  this  point,  however,  he 
stops,  and,  instead  of  advancing,  it  is  doutful  whether  he  will 
fully  maintain  through  middle  age  what  he  learnt  in  youth.  In 
most  respects  it  is  clear  that  the  savage  cannot  be  raised  to  the 
level  of  our  civilisation  in  a  single  generation ;  but  there  are 
no  grounds  for  supposing  that  he  would  not  continue  to 
advance  from  generation  to  generation  with  continuous 
cultivation.' 

Concerning  the  natives  of  the  Andaman  Islands,  Mr  M.  V. 
Portman  says  ^ :  '  One  often  hears  the  English  schoolboy 
described  as  a  savage,  and  after  sixteen  years'  experience  of  the 
Andamanese,  I  find  that  in  many  ways  they  closely  resemble 
the  average  lower-class  English  country  schoolboy.' 

Keane  (322,  p.  44)  cites  with  approval  the  statement  of 
Captain  Binger  concerning  the  West  Sudanese  :  'The  black  is 
a  child,  and"  will  long  remain  so.'  As  will  be  seen  later,  all 
these  statements  need  qualification. 

^Joiirn.  Anthr.  Inst.,  XXVI.  p.  369. 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  297 

Of  the  Passes  Indians,  whose  '  industrious  habits,  fideUty, 
and  mildness  of  disposition,  dociUty,  and,  it  may  be  added, 
personal  beauty,  especially  of  the  children  and  women,'  made 
them  very  attractive  to  the  Portuguese  colonists  in  the  region  of 
the  Amazons,  Mr  H.  W.  Bates  tells  us  (42,  p.  299),  that  '  had 
the  ambition  of  the  chiefs  of  some  of  these  industrious  tribes 
been  turned  to  the  acquisition  of  wealth,  probably  we  should 
have  seen  indigenous  civilised  nations  in  the  heart  of  South 
America  similar  to  those  found  on  the  Andes  of  Peru  and 
Mexico.'  The  teachability  of  these  Passes  is  seen  from  the 
readiness  with  which  they  have  adopted  many  customs  and 
notions  of  the  whites. 

Another  'fundamental  defect  of  character'  in  the  Ama- 
zonian Indian,  besides  the  communistic  idea  of  property,  is  the 
absence  of  '  any  notion  of  domesticating  any  animals  for  use  as 
food,'  a  notion  which,  even  under  the  influence  of  civiHsation 
— they  have  taken  to  the  hen,  but  not  well  to  the  ox,  sheep  and 
hog— seems  to  come  hard  to  them.  This  'defect  in  the 
Indian  character,'  according  to  Mr  Bates  (42,  p.  99),  is  due  to 
the  'domination  of  the  forest,'  which  has  held  these  native 
races  back  from  progress  towards  civilisation. 

Of  the  Orang-kubus,  who  dwell  in  the  marshy,  forested 
region  in  the  north-west  part  of  Palembang,  Sumatra,  Captain 
Zelle  tells  us  (694,  p.  27)  that  they  are  one  of  the  most 
primitive  peoples  in  existence,  although,  so  far  as  character  and 
general  behaviour  are  concerned,  they  rank  higher  than  the 
Battas,  who  are  much  more  highly  civilised;  here,  as  in  certain 
other  cases,  cannibalism  is  found  with  the  more  civilised  tribe. 
Indeed,  as  M.  Zaborowski  says  (694,  p.  34),  anthropophagy  is 
hardly  a  primitive  custom,  since  '  it  requires  the  development 
of  considerable  social  inequality  to  permit  certain  men  to 
consider  other  men  as  a  species  of  game.' 

One  might  also  refer  to  the  Maoris  of  New  Zealand, 
who,  at  the  beginning  of  the  present  century  were  fierce 
cannibals,  but  have  now  six  representatives  in  the  New  Zealand 
Legislature,  and  evidence  abundant  powers  of  adaptation  and 
improvement.!  xhe  native  members  of  both  branches  of  the 
Legislature,  we  are  told,  '  take  a  dignified,  active  and  intelligent 
part  in  the  debates,  especially  in  those  having  any  reference  to 
Maori  interests,'  and  Mr  Kidd  is  led  to  remark  concerning  this 
people  (325,  p.  293),  'though  they  are  slowly  disappearing 
1  Nature,  1S97,  p.  433. 


298  THE   CHILD 

before  the  race  of  higher  social  efficiency,  with  which  they  have 
come  into  contact,  they  do  not  appear  to  show  any  intellectual 
incapacity  for  assimilating  European  ideas,  or  for  acquiring 
proficiency  in  any  branch  of  European  learning.' 

Professor  Blumentritt's  recent  studies  of  the  Tagals  and 
other  Malays  of  the  PhiHppines  show  the  very  great  native 
ability  of  this  stock,  which  has  produced  poets  and  men  of 
science  like  Rizal,  litterateurs  like  Luna,  painters  and  artists 
like  Resureccion  Hidalgo  and  Juan  Luna,  besides  lawyers  and 
physicians  in  abundance,  and  gold  and  silversmiths,  wood 
carvers,  etc.,  of  a  high  order  of  merit.  The  Malay  peoples 
of  Java  and  Sumatra,  to  say  nothing  of  their  congeners  in 
Madagascar,  have  produced  men  and  women  who  certainly  do 
not  suffer  from  comparison  with  the  average  of  the  Aryan  or 
Semitic  races,  while  not  a  few  of  them  would  take  very  high 
rank  even  there. 

Many  primitive  peoples,  like  some  of  the  American  Indians, 
the  Aetas  of  Luzon,  the  Kruman  of  Liberia,  the  Bushmen  of 
South  Africa,  certain  Australian  tribes,  etc.,  while  capable  of 
absorbing  a  great  deal  of  the  culture  of  the  white  race,  feeling 
the  lack  of  their  old  milieu,  with  its  social  advantages,  weary  of 
the  new  civilisation  and  fade  away  individually  and  racially. 
It  is  not  incapacity  for  civilisation  so  much  as  dislike  for  it  and 
love  of  the  old  that  cause  so  often  the  abandonment  of  the 
newly-acquired  culture  by  the  ex-savage  or  ex-barbarian.  Such 
relapses  as  that  of  the  Aeta  educated  by  the  Archbishop  of 
Manila ;  the  Brazilian  Indian,  who  graduated  from  a  medical 
college  j  the  young  Kruman  cited  by  Dr  Barret ;  the  Fuegians 
of  Captain  Fitzroy,  etc.,  have  been  assigned  an  exaggerated 
importance  in  race  psychology.  In  reality,  the  Robinson 
Crusoes,  Pitcairn  Islanders,  hermits  and  relapsed  ones  of  the 
great  civilised  races  outweigh  these  and  call  for  more  explana- 
tion. Primitive  peoples  under  the  exact  rule  of  our  culture, 
young  country  recruits  in  the  barracks,  and  school-children 
have  much  in  common  ;  nostalgia  and  the  melancholy  phthisis 
that  follows  get  a  hold  upon  them,  because,  as  Dr  Lasegue  has 
said,  '  discipline,  narrow  subordination,  impose  upon  them 
constantly  depressing  unrest  and  restraint.'  Zaborowski,  who 
cites  Lasegue,  compares  with  the  recruits,  who,  besides  the  con- 
scious remembrance  of  their  lost  liberty,  are  under  the  pain 
of  a  new  regime  and  a  new  viilieu,  the  school-children  of  the 
present  day,    who,    'intensely    over-driven,   come   to   present 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  299 

the  same  symptoms  of  depression.'  A  savage,  a  soldier,  a  lover, 
a  child  best  of  all,  knows  what  it  is  to  be  homesick,  and  to  feel 
that  loss  of  liberty  which  makes  life  scarcely  worth  the  living, 
and  for  which  all  the  '  advantages '  of  so-called  civilisation  are 
but  a  mean  compensation. 

The  Savage,  the  Child,  and  the  Insane. — That  the  mind 
of  the  savage  must  be  characterised  as  insane  is  a  view  held  by 
not  a  few  recent  writers,  who  are  represented  by  Dr  Friedmann, 
when  he  says ' :  '  The  state  of  primitive  thought  is  nothing  more 
nor  less  than  insanity,  and  has  its  parallel  only  in  our  asylums 
for  mental  diseases.'  Reasoning  by  analogy,  confusion  of  the 
real  and  the  ideal,  word-plays  and  figurative  language  are, 
however,  even  now  too  common  normally  among  all  races  and 
conditions  of  men,  to  be  regarded  as  evidences  of  an  unsound 
mind.  That  the  whole  earth  was  once  peopled  by  lunatics  is  a 
theory  which  the  arts,  the  inventions,  the  institutions,  the 
language  of  even  the  lowest  races  of  mankind  render  absolutely 
untenable.  No  mere  psycopath  laid  the  foundations  of 
astronomy,  invented  the  boomerang,  or  changed  the  wild  grass 
into  the  beautiful  Indian  corn.  The  earliest  peoples,  like 
so  many  normal  individuals  to-day,  may  have  resembled  the 
lunatic  without  sharing  his  lunacy,  just  as  they  have  approached 
the  genius  without  possessing  his  intellect,  in  both  which 
respects  they  are  nearer  the  child. 

In  his  volume  on  Sanity  and  Insanity  (423,  p.  122),  Dr 
Mercier  says :  '  A  man  who  is  unable  to  count  above  5,  who 
walks  about  naked  coram  populo,  adorning  his  person  only  with 
feathers  and  tawdry  ornaments,  would  ordinarily  be  called 
insane  ;  but  if  he  has  a  black  skin,  and  lives  on  the  banks 
of  the  Congo,  he  is  considered  an  average  specimen  of  normal 
humanity.'  Insane  conduct,  Dr  Mercier  tells  us,  'cannot  be 
corrected,'  and  conduct  he  defines  as  *  the  adjustment  of 
the  organism  to  the  environment.'  With  this  understanding, 
the  savage  is  in  no  wise  insane,  even  though  insanity  and 
kindred  forms  of  mental  disease  may  prevail,  as  some  author- 
ities maintain,  more  commonly  among  savages  and  barbarians 
than  among  the  higher  races,  and  many  of  the  comparisons 
and  rapprochetnents  instituted  by  the  Italian  schools  of  crim- 
inology and  psychiatry,  fall  to  pieces  upon  close  examination. 
To  a  very  great  extent  the  same  may  be  said  of  the  parallel 
sought  to  be  estabUshed,  e.g.,  by  Dr  Clifford  AUbut,  between 
Science,  N.S.,  IV.  p.  357. 


300  THE   CHILD 

the  mentally  diseased  and  the  normal  child — the  view  that  the 
child  is  practically  in  an  insane  state  of  mind,  though  of  a 
somewhat  primitive  sort.  For  Dr  AUbut,  children  '  have  in 
primary  forms,  what  in  complex  and  derived  forms  is  the 
insanity  of  adults,'  and  the  imagination  of  children  is  '  the 
vestibule  of  the  insanity  of  adults.'  But  these  writers  exagger- 
ate the  danger  of  'the  fairy  dreams  and  pretty  fancies  of 
childhood,'  their  confusion  of  the  real  and  the  unreal,  their 
seemingly  absurd  conceits  of  thought  and  expression.  The 
child,  who,  never  having  seen  such  things  before,  but  familiar 
with  that  wherewith  she  compared  them,  called  a  pot  of 
beautiful  fresh  green  ferns  '  a  pot  of  green  feathers,'  was 
far  from  being  insane,  making  the  very  best  use  possible  of  the 
environment.  So  with  many  of  the  seeming  quaint  and 
curious  observations  of  children  recorded  by  Hartmann,  Pre- 
sident Hall,  Professor  Brown,  Professor  Russell,  and  others 
who  have  studied  '  the  contents  of  children's  minds,'  '  the 
thoughts  and  reasonings  of  children,'  etc.  The  law  of 
evolution  is  being  illustrated  here  instead  of  the  unlaw  of 
chaos. 

In  a  very  suggestive  article  on  'Folk-Lore  in  Mental 
Pathology,'  Dr  Eugenio  Tanzi,  of  Genoa,  after  discussing  the 
general  characteristics  of  persecutory  delirium,  panophobia, 
personification,  religious  delirium,  delirium  of  ambition,  erotic, 
hypochondriac  delirium,  logolatry,  name  and  number  prejudices 
and  manias,  paranoia,  enigmas,  conjurations,  nomadism,  incoher- 
ent episodes,  double  personalities,  hallucinations,  etc.,  comes  to 
the  following  conclusions  (626,  p.  418) : 

'  I.  Delirium  is  determined  by  the  apparition  and  the 
hegemony  of  given  images  and  tendencies  which  are  summed 
up  in  superstition  and  acquire  the  character  of  an  ideative 
monospasm.  2.  Like  images  and  tendencies  are  met  with  as 
sole  and  uncontrasted  manifestations  of  the  intelligence  in 
primitive  man ;  and  they  are  inherited,  but  enfeebled  and 
latent  in  more  developed  man.  3.  Between  the  group  of 
these  primitive  ideas  and  that  of  the  more  recent  ideas  there 
is  in  the  complete  and  developed  man  a  disparity  of  energy 
and  an  antagonism  of  function  quite  to  the  advantage  of  the 
latter.  4.  The  clinical  genesis  of  delirium — whatever  it  may 
be — consists  in  the  victory  of.  the  superstitious  tendencies, 
which  assume  the  upper  hand.  This  modifies  the  type  of 
intellectual  constitution,  which,  developed  and  savage  at  one 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  3OI 

and  the  same  time,  degenerates  into  a  real  caricature  and  bears 
in  its  deformity  the  stamp  of  morbid  origin.  5.  The  suprem- 
acy of  the  superstitious  tendencies  is  effected  in  the  paranoiac  by 
a  congenital  prevalence  of  development,  in  the  non-degenerate 
lunatic  by  a  paralysis  of  the  higher  functions.' 

Mysticism,  the  one  thing  common  to  the  savage,  the 
normal  man  and  the  lunatic,  is  the  one  thing  which,  in  the 
differing  ways  it  obtains  among  them,  distinguishes  them  from 
one  another,  and  distinguishes  the  degenerate  lunatic  from  the 
undegenerate.  '  With  primitive  man,'  says  Tanzi,  '  mysticism 
is  the  little  treasure  of  a  great  poverty,  the  best  he  has  in  his 
brain,  the  fruit  and  the  flower  of  his  intelligence.  For  the 
uncivilised  normal  man  it  is  a  fettering  of  conscience,  that 
portion  of  it  which  is  ready  to  be  lost,  a  mnemonic  survival  not 
far  from  being  submerged  in  the  unconscious.  In  the  paranoiac 
it  is  the  revival  of  an  obsolescent  function,  what  is  re-born 
from  the  ruins,  the  defeated,  rising  again.  In  the  non- 
degenerate  lunatic  it  is  the  wretched  residuum  of  a  disaster,  the 
little  and  the  worse  that  disease  has  spared.' 

In  other  words,  this  mystical  prejudice,  diverse  in  its 
attributes,  marks  the  brains  of  all  men.  In  the  savage  it  is 
monarch  of  all ;  in  the  normal  man  it  is  reduced  to  a  state 
of  servitude, — a  poetic  tendency,  or  an  accessory  diversion 
of  thought ;  in  the  lunatic,  either  in  its  own  strength  as 
a  victorious  rebel,  or  by  reason  of  paralysis  of  the  opposite 
tendencies,  as  a  last  superstition,  it  becomes  again  the 
sovereign, 

The  child,  too,  has  parallel  states  of  mind  which  are  clearly 
seen  in  the  phenomena  of  delusions  and  illusions,  fads  and 
fancies,  questionings  and  dogmatisings,  nonsense-talk,  language- 
play,  verbigeration,  etc.  Hallucination  furnishes  an  interesting 
rapprochement:  'Children  would  not  participate  with  such 
vivacity  and  interest  in  the  fictions  which  constitute  their 
games,  if,  in  playing,  they  were  not  semi-hallucinated.'  And 
primitive  man  likewise. 

The  paranoiac,  the  child  and  the  savage  all  vivify  nature  ; 
'with  them,'  to  use  Tylor's  apt  expression,  'anything  is  some- 
body ' ;  every  fact  is  a  deed,  nothing  is  authorless  ;  the  dead 
are  more  alive  even  than  the  living ;  night  is  no  whit  less 
empty  than  day,  sky  and  sea  than  mountain  and  forest.  Pride 
and  morbid  ambition  also  link  together  the  paranoiac,  the 
savage  and  the  child.     Tribe  after  tribe  call  themselves  '  men.' 


302  THE   CHILD 

'  the  people  ' ;  the  paranoiac  is  '  Pope,'  '  Emperor,'  '  God ' ; 
children  run  through  a  gamut  of  higher  personalities.  The 
cult  of  the  word,  logolatry,  verbigeration,  neologism  are 
common  to  child,  savage  and  lunatic.  The  paranoiac  has  a 
delirium  of  speech  ;  many  savage  tribes  lack  general  terms  for 
elementary  things,  but  revel  in  a  wealth  of  synonyms,  doublets, 
specifying  words,  etc.,  and  verbs  whose  conjugation  contem- 
plates all  positions  and  attitudes.  Children  '  divert  themselves 
with  mere  words,  rhyming  them,  singing  them,  careless  of  their 
nonsensicalncss.  They  invent  words  through  very  pleasure  of 
verbigerating.'  In  like  manner  '  races  in  their  childhood,  in  the 
new  delight  of  speech,  neologise  without  regard  to  use  or 
necessity,  impoverishing  their  language  by  making  it  plethoric 
of  synonyms  '  (626,  p.  404). 

Name-superstition  is  another  thing  that  belongs  to  the 
psycopath,  the  child  and  the  primitive  races  of  men.  In  the 
names  of  self  and  of  other  beings  the  magic  and  the  mystery 
of  the  word  linger  long.  The  child,  the  savage  and  the 
paranoiac  love  many  names,  like  to  change  them,  conceal  them 
from  strangers,  etc.  In  his  study  of  the  neologisms  of  the 
insane,  Tanzi  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  delusive  ideas 
are  innate,  and  formed  for  primitive  peoples  the  highest 
expression  of  their  normal  thought,  receding  later  with  the 
growth  of  culture  and  intellectual  development.  This  view 
of  the  inheritance  of  delusive  ideas  is  not  commended  by 
Roncoroni.  ^ 

Le  Bon  has  little  opinion  of  the  reason  and  logic  of  children 
and  primitive  man.  'Let  one  try  by  reasoning,'  he  says  (351, 
p.  132),  'to  convince  primitive  minds — savages  and  children, 
for  example — and  he  will  realise  the  feeble  value  possessed  by 
this  method  of  argumentation.'  Speaking  of  the  child's  failure 
to  distinguish  between  the  reason  of  an  act  and  its  form, 
Guyau  observes  (351,  p.  38):  'This  confusion  of  reason  and 
form  exists  in  a  not  less  striking  degree  among  savages  and 
primitive  peoples.  And  it  is  upon  this  confusion  that  is  based 
the  sacred  character  of  religious  rites.' 

Tarde,  in  his  '  Social  Logic,'  notes  many  resemblances 
between  the  savage  and  the  child  in  matters  of  feeling,  belief, 
individual  and  social  action.  Children  and  savages  seem 
always  to  have  some  fixed  idea,  some  'subject  of  privileged 
preoccupation,'  and  civilisation  (like  education)  is  often 
'^  Rev.  Sperini.,  1890,  p.  ll. 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE    SAVAGE  303 

impossible  without  an  'attenuation  of  beliefs.'  Perhaps  the 
greatest  belief  or  faith  of  primitive  man  is  language  itself — - 
numina  nomina — though  Tarde  goes  a  little  too  far  when  he 
declares  that  '  the  Bas-Breton  speech  has  done  more  to  hinder 
the  assimilation  of  Brittany  to  France,  than  Christianity  to  aid 
it,  (631,  p.  11).  Savages  and  children  are  alike  again  in 
their  tendency  to  '  receive  all  sorts  of  ideas,  of  entirely  hetero- 
geneous origins,  without  thinking  of  making  them  harmonise 
one  with  another  in  the  least.'  The  imagination  of  children  is 
diverse  like  that  of  the  primitive  races  of  men,  but  all  have 
borrowed  largely  from  '  the  Eden  of  dreams  and  the  Hell  of 
nightmare.'  Tarde  is  not  quite  fair  to  the  American  Indian, 
when  he  thus  sums  up  the  imaginative  nature  of  the  savage  : 
'  The  Negro  is  imaginative  but  incoherent ;  he  combines 
rather  than  co-ordinates  his  thought.  The  Redskin  has  more 
sequence  in  his  ideas,  but  has  fewer  of  them.  The  Polynesian, 
superior  to  both,  is  already  capable  of  systematising,  dramatis- 
ing, organising.'  With  respect  to  attention  :  '  Prehistoric  man, 
like  the  savages  of  to-day,  and  like  children,  must  have  been, 
when  intelligent,  very  spontaneously  attentive  to  articulate 
sounds,  and,  consequently,  very  well  endowed  for  invention 
as  well  as  for  linguistic  imitation  (631,  p.  80). 

Will  and  Personification. — The  statement  of  Ribot  (536,  p, 
303)  that  '  for  primitive  man  all  is  animate,  full  of  arbitrary 
caprices,  of  desires,  of  intentions,  and,  particularly,  of  mysteries, 
because  everything  is  unforeseen  ;  it  is  the  reign  of  universal 
contingency,'  is  hardly  justifiable  in  the  light  of  the  best  and 
most  recent  studies  of  savage  and  barbarous  life. 

The  savage's  sense  of  will  has  been  well  described  by  Dr 
D.  G.  Brinton  ^ :  '  To  the  primitive  man,  as  we  know  him,  the 
sense  of  individual  power,  that  which  metaphysicians  call  "  free 
will"  was  very  present.  The  strong,  the  mighty,  was  what 
excited  his  admiration  above  all  else.  His  ideal  was  the  man 
who  could  do  what  he  wished  or  willed  to  do.  The  savage 
acknowledges  no  theoretic  limit  to  the  will  any  more  than  does 
the  religious  enthusiast.  It  can  move  mountains  and  consume 
rivers.  It  can  act  at  indefinite  distances,  and  its  force  is 
measureless.  In  the  religion  of  ancient  Egypt,  the  highest 
gods  could  be  made  to  serve  the  will  of  a  man  did  he  but  use 
the  proper  formula  of  command.' 

No  better  psychological  essay  has  been  written  for  some 
1  Science,  N.S.,  IV.  p.  488. 


304  THE   CHILD 

time  than  Miss  Alice  Fletcher's  '  Notes  on  Certain  Beliefs 
concerning  Will  Power  among  the  Siouan  Tribes ' — a  paper 
full  of  most  suggestive  facts,  and  a  good  antidote  to  much  of 
the  writing  about  primitive  people  to  be  found  in  many  modern 
psychologies.  It  bears  out  much  of  what  Dr  Brinton  has 
said.  Like  men  of  our  own  race,  the  Indian  was  conscious 
within  himself  of  the  power  or  will  that  permeated  the  universe. 
The  'other-selves,'  which  primitive  man,  like  the  child,  knew, 
possessed  this  will  or  power,  '  dim  or  clear,'  according  as  they 
were  inanimate  things,  or  men  or  gods.  There  is  logic  in  what 
so  many  metaphysicians  have  chosen  to  term  the  illogic  of  the 
savage  and  the  child.  Both,  at  least,  unified  all  nature  by 
personifing  it. 

Biese,  in  his  rhilosophy  of  the  Metaphoric  (54),  discusses 
in  great  detail  the  parallel  between  the  thought  of  the 
childhood  of  the  individual  and  the  childhood  of  the 
race,  in  so  far  as  the  personification  of  all  nature  and  the 
animating  of  the  inanimate  are  concerned.  In  savagery  and 
modern  philosophy,  in  barbarism  and  the  highest  religions,  in 
no-culture  and  in  all-culture,  we  find  more  or  less  evidence  of 
belief  in  the  ensouling  of  everything  in  the  universe.  The 
fancy  of  our  children,  the  words  of  our  lexicons,  the  myths  we 
have  not  yet  forgotten,  the  religions  we  profess,  the  art  we 
preserve,  the  architecture  we  imitate,  painting,  sculpture,  music, 
poetry,  the  philosophy  of  the  metaphysicians  and  of  the  ignor- 
ant common  people,  bristle  even  yet  with  metaphors  that  tell 
the  same  tale.  And  when  children  and  primitive  peoples  take 
these  things  for  realities,'  says  Biese  (54,  p.  116),  they  are  not 
utterly  deceived.  The  child's  instinct,  the  savage's  naivete, 
the  wisdom  of  the  genius  and  the  philosopher  are  one — the 
universe  really  is  animate,  ensouled,  and  man  could  not  do 
otherwise  than  think  it  so.  This  ensoulment  of  all  is  the  first 
unitary  thought  of  mankind.  In  fact,  the  play  of  fancy  fore- 
shadows the  reality  of  experience. 

Not  quite  of  the  same  sort  is  the  opinion  of  Perez,  who 
speaks  of  (486,  p.  191):  'A  primitive  confusion  which  the 
child  and  the  savage  would  make  between  the  animate  and 
inanimate.  This  confusion  exists  less  still  with  the  young 
civilised  individual  than  with  the  savage  of  to-day.'  Most  of 
the  philosophical  writers  have,  indeed,  dismissed  the  question 
with  much  less  attention  and  inquiry  than  even  Perez  has 
devoted  to  it. 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  305 

In  her  chapter  on  'The  Child's  First  Ideas,'  Miss  Lom- 
broso  observes  that  'these  ideas  are  very  imperfect,  not  be- 
cause his  method  of  reasoning  is  imperfect,  but  just  because 
the  child  judges  rationally  according  to  the  data  furnished 
him  by  his  experience '  (369,  p.  44).  Thus  '  when  the  child 
and  the  savage  think  the  ec  ho  the  voice  of  a  human  being, 
the  image  in  the  mirror  a  person,  attribute  life  to  a  straw  that 
moves,  believe  that  God  is  warm  or  cold,  or  ask  where  the 
water  goes  that  is  evaporated,  they  are  not  putting  forth  un- 
reason, for  they  do  not  know,  they  cannot  imagine,  a  series  of 
causes  and  effects  different  from  those  which  they  observe  every 
day.'  Later,  with  the  observation  of  many  more  things  and 
facts,  '  reasoning  and  the  critical  sense  of  things  develops  in 
them.'  So  also  with  other  imperfect  judgments  of  children. 
Their  imperfect  and  absurd  ideas  about  time  and  death  '  are 
important  to  know,  because  they  lie  close  to  the  beliefs  of 
savages,  and  so  give  the  explanation  of  primitive  religions, 
shedding  light  also  upon  childish  morals,  upon  that  indiffer- 
ence to  the  loss  of  a  loved  individual,  which  we  take  to  be 
insensibility,  whereas,  in  truth,  children,  having  no  idea  of 
death  or  of  separation,  cannot  feel  the  pain  we  do  from  these 
events.'  With  the  child,  indeed,  its  reasoning  is  'the  result  of 
all  the  factors  of  its  intellectual  life,  and  furnishes  the  way  to 
find  the  incognita  of  its  mental  progress'  (369,  p.  58).  Much  of 
the  seeming  incongruity  of  the  savage's  ideas,  as  of  that  of  the 
first  ideas  of  the  child,  is,  in  a  sense,  perfectly  normal  and 
natural,  and  arises  from  associations  apt  and  fitting  for  the 
individual  concerned.  The  recent  studies  of  Ziehen  and 
Ament  have  thrown  much  light  upon  the  problems  of  the 
association  of  ideas  in  children  ;  a  good  study  of  the  idea- 
associations  of  primitive  peoples  is  yet  a  desideraiutn. 

Suggestion. — Guyau  considers  that  the  state  of  the  child  at 
the  moment  of  birth  is  comparable  to  that  of  a  hypnotised  in- 
dividual— both  are  characterised  by  the  same  aideism  (absence 
of  ideas),  or  the  same  passive  monoideism  (domination  of  a 
single  idea).  All  young  children,  moreover,  are  hypnotisable, 
and  easily  hypnotisable,  remarkably  open  to  suggestion  and 
auto-suggesticn.  Further,  '  all  that  the  young  child  feels  is  a 
suggestion,  which  will  give  place  to  a  habit,  propagated  some- 
times throughout  life,  as  one  sees  perpetuated  certain  impres- 
sions of  terror  inculcated  into  children  by  their  nurses'  (259a, 
p.  16). 


306  THE    CHILD 

I)r  Thomas,  in  his  study  of  'Suggestion'  (636,  p.  17), 
observes :  '  If  the  child,  more  than  the  man  does,  yields  so 
easily  to  all  the  suggestions  of  example,  obeys  sometimes  the 
least  impulse,  it  is  because  his  power  of  reflection  is  still 
very  feeble,  it  is  because  he  has  no  marked  personality,  no 
profound  habitudes,  no  fixed  rules  of  conduct  capable  of 
orienting  his  life.'  Not  so  true,  however,  is  the  statement 
which  l)r  Thomas  makes  concerning  primitive  man:  'The 
lower  races  resemble  the  child  in  this  respect.  The  Fuegians, 
for  example,  have,  if  we  arc  to  l)clieve  the  accounts  of  travellers, 
an  aptitude  for  imitation  so  marvellous  that  they  reproduce 
spontaneously  the  gestures  of  persons  who  speak  to  them.' 
Not  all  lower  races  are  so  characterised  at  least. 

A  further  comparison  Dr  Thomas  ventures  with  the  men- 
tally and  physically  defective :  '  The  same  facts,  more  or  less 
attenuated,  it  is  true,  may  be  observed  in  the  case  of  feeble 
minds,  in  the  case  of  those  who  possess  an  organisation  sickly, 
excessively  impressionable,  and  suited  to  receive  all  imprints. 
Hence  the  mobility  of  their  character;  hence,  also,  the  abso- 
lute empire  which  certain  persons  have  over  them.' 

But  here,  as  elsewhere,  the  normality  of  the  savage,  the 
immaturity  of  the  child,  the  defect  or  degeneracy  of  the  adult, 
interfere  with  the  parallelism  of  the  psychic  facts.  Klany  of 
the  most  interesting  facts  connected  with  the  subject  of  hyp- 
notism and  suggestion  among  primitive  peoples  may  be  read 
in  Dr  StoU's  valuable  treatise,  where  the  limitless  role  of  sug- 
gestion among  the  lower  races  of  men  is  fully  exploited.  _ 

linitatifl7i. — The  vast  importance  of  imitation  and  its  role 
in  all  the  activities  of  childhood  and  adult  life  have  been 
emphasised  by  all  philosophers.  Gustave  Tarde,  in  his  very 
suggestive  volumes  on  '  The  Laws  of  Imitation,'  '  Social  Logic,' 
etc.,  and  Professor  J.  Mark  Baldwin,  in  his  Child  ajid  the  Race, 
have  very  recently  discussed  the  subject  in  masterly  fashion. 

'  Whenever  there  is  question  of  contracts,  services,  con- 
straints,' says  M.  Tarde  (628,  p.  vii.),  'we  have  to  do  with 
imitation.  When  man  speaks,  prays,  fights,  works,  carves,  paints, 
versifies,  he  does  nothing  but  make  new  examples  of  verbal 
signs,  of  rites,  of  sword-blows  or  gun-shots,  of  industrial  or 
artistic  processes,  of  poetic  forms,  of  models — in  a  word, 
objects  of  his  imitation,  spontaneous  or  obligatory,  conscious 
or  "unconscious,  voluntary  or  involuntary,  intelligent  or  sheepish, 
sympathetic   or   odious,   admiring  or   envious,    but   imitation 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  307 

always.  It  is  the  best  touchstone  for  distinguishing  what  is 
social  and  what  is  vital.  All  that  man  does  without  havin<^ 
earned  it  by  the  example  of  others— walking,  crying,  eatin^'' 
loving  even,  in  the  grossest  sense  of  the  term— is  purely  vita?- 
whilst  walking  in  a  certain  way,  in  gymnastic  step,  waltzin</ 
singing  an  air,  preferring  at  table  certain  dishes  of  one's  o\m 
country,  and  behaving  there  properly,  courting  according  to  the 
taste  of  the  day  a  fashionable  woman,  all  this  is  social.  The 
inventor  who  inaugurates  a  new  species  of  action,  such  as 
weaving  by  steam,  telephoning,  moving  a  carriage  by  electricity, 
performs  himself  a  social  work  only  in  so  far  as  he  has  com- 
bined old  examples,  and  in  so  far  as  his  combination  is 
destmed  to  serve  as  an  example  itself.' 

In  another  interesting  volume  M.  Tarde  takes  up  the  brief 
of  the  other  side,  and  in  '  Universal  Opposition '  has  written 
of  the  rivalries,  contrarieties,  controversies,  debates,  contests, 
struggles,  wars,  destructiveness,  spoliation,  antitheses,  contrasts] 
dissonances,  contra-similitudes  of  all  sorts,  which  seem  to  make 
in  all  stages  of  physical,  vital,  mental  existence  an  eternally 
defiling  succession  of  pairs  of  contraries,  an  endless  war,  an 
everlasting  ManichcXan  day.  The  relation  in  which  opposition, 
properly  understood,  stands  with  respect  to  sympathy,  peace,' 
solidarity,  federation,  love,  goodness,  harmony,  imitation,  etc.] 
IS  thus  epigrammatically  stated  (p.  viii.)  :  *  Marriage  alone  is 
fecund,  not  the  duel;  without  the  inventiveness  of  geniu^ 
daughter  of  the  innate  sympathy  of  man,  the  social  melee  would 
certainly  not  have  sufficed  to  give  origin  to  human  progress.' 

*  Imitation  and  Allied  Activities  '  forms  the  subject  of  the 
first  volume  of  the  Child  Observations,  the  data  for  which 
have  been  collected  by  the  teachers  and  students  of  the 
Normal  School  at  Worcester,  Mass.  Miss  Haskell's  volume— 
the  interesting  introduction  is  by  Professor  E.  H.  Russell- 
contains  1208  plain,  unvarnished  entries  of  child-phenomena 
of  imitation  (ages  1-3  years,  191;  ages  3-4,  129;  ages  4-5,  130; 
ages  5-6,  121 ;  ages  6-7,  123  ;  ages  7-8,  91  ;  ages  8-9,  96;  ages 
9-10,  82;  ages  lo-ii,  83;  ages  11-12,  45;  ages  12-16,  107)  of 
all  sorts  and  varieties,  mechanical,  sensory,  motor,  psychical, 
social,  esthetic,  linguistic,  artistic,  moral,  dramatic,  vocal,  etc.— 
an  array  of  evidence  which  seems  amply  to  justify  the  lines  of 
Wordsworth  which  appear  upon  the  title-page : 

'  As  if  his  whole  vocation 
Were  endless  imitation,' 

21 


308  THE   CHILD 

'J'hese  records  have  been  charted  out  by  Miss  Caroline 
Frear,  of  Stanford  University,  to  show  the  things  or  persons 
imitated,  the  sort  of  imitation,  the  exactness  of  the  imitation, 
the  persons  with  whom  the  cliild  plays,  and  the  proportionate 
imitation  of  action,  speech,  sound.  Kliss  Frear  calls  attention 
to  the  fact  that  'the  j)roportion  of  imitation  of  adults  (a  pro- 
portion that  increases  with  the  age  of  the  child)  is  far  in  excess 
of  imitation  of  other  children  or  of  animals,'  while  the  per- 
centage of  imitation  of  things  'is  too  slight  to  merit  representa- 
tion.' But  many  more  studies  and  investigations  are  needed 
to  make  certain  the  interpretation  of  these  results.  A\'ith  the 
years  '  direct  imitation '  ('  the  more  immediate,  more  instinctive, 
less  voluntary,  sometimes  reflex,  at  all  events  impulsive  imita- 
tion') decreases,  while  playing  ('the  more  dramatic  form  of 
imitation ')  increases.  In  the  early  years  imitation  of  action 
preponderates  over  that  of  speech,  suggesting  (the  author  re- 
marks) that  'possibly  in  the  early  years  too  much  is  made  of 
teaching  language,  and  more  attention  should  be  given  to  hand 
and  body  activity,'  though,  here  again,  more  data  are  required 
to  make  certain  the  point.  Miss  Frear  notes  also  '  the  increas- 
ing combination  of  dramatic  speech  with  dramatic  action,  and 
the  decreasing  occurrence  of  playing  by  simple  action  alone.' 
The  tendency  for  the  child  to  play  with  adults  '  is  marked 
during  the  first  year,'  while  during  the  next  two  or  three  years 
'  he  is  satisfied  to  play  by  himself,' a  tendency  which  decreases, 
as  '  with  the  development  of  the  social  instinct  the  tendency  to 
play  with  other  children  increases  rapidly  and  steadily,'  and 
there  are  increasing  numbers  of  groups  of  children  playing 
together— a  fact  which,  the  audior  seems  to  think,  '  may 
indicate  that,  while  at  first  the  child  needs  strong,  authoritative 
control,  yet,  beginning  perhaps  at  four,  he  needs  more  and 
more  democratic  association  with  his  fellows,  with  its  increased 
possibilities  of  self-direction  '  (219). 

Taken  altogether,  these  imitation-observations  show  how 
really  human  the  young  human  being  is,  how  far  removed  he 
is  in  many  respects  from  the  mere  animal,  how  prophetic, 
rather  than  atavistic,  are  his  actions  and  their  goals  of  thought. 

Miss  Frear's  pedagogical  suggestions  are  as  follows  :  '  (a)  The 
natural  tendencies  of  children  indicate  that  adaptations  of  adult 
occupations  furnish  healthy  material  for  part  of  the  activity  of 
the  kindergarten.  (/>)  From  the  age  of  four  or  five  years  con- 
siderable  play  should   be  given  to  the  free  development  of 


THE    CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  309 

children  in  connection  with  their  social  instincts,  (r)  In  the 
early  years  of  school  life  action  should  be  given  a  prominent 
place.  The  formal  teaching  of  language  should  be  subordinate. 
Verbal  expression  should  be  developed  spontaneously  in  con- 
nection with  action.'  There  is  danger,  however,  in  too  much 
imitation,  even  under  the  best  conditions. 

'  The  model  is  the  death  of  all  formative  work,'  says  Heydner 
in  his  essay  on  the  child-mind,  for  '  it  is  easier,'  to  use  the 
words  of  Ansbacher,  '  to  make  men  out  of  children  than  to 
make  children  out  of  men.'  In  learning  language,  in  coming 
to  a  knowledge  of  the  differences  between  literary  and  col- 
loquial speech,  between  written  language  and  home-dialect,  in 
substituting  new,  strange  words  and  phrases  for  the  old  familiar 
ones,  the  child  is  often  in  the  position  of  the  adult  learner  of 
a  foreign  idiom.  '  To  marry  the  written  language  with  the 
dialect' — so  that  no  bastard  forms  are  generated — is,  Hilde- 
brand  remarks,  one  of  the  teacher's  greatest  tasks. 

Taboo. — If  it  were  possible  to  exclude  imitation  and  con- 
tamination as  important  factors  in  the  regulation  of  child-life 
among  the  civilised  races  of  to-day,  one  could  see  in  the  '  bar,' 
of  plays  and  games,  the  reserve  of  boys  before  girls,  and 
of  children  of  both  sexes  before  adults,  with  regard  to  their 
favourite  games  and  amusements,  their  pet  animals  and  little 
sanctuaries  and  hiding-places  in  the  garret  or  the  forest,  the 
cellar  or  the  hillside,  their  secret  languages  and  their  treat- 
ment of  natural  and  artificial  objects,  many  facts  permitting  a 
rapprochement  with  practices  and  usages  of  savage  and  bar- 
barous peoples  all  over  the  globe.  But  in  childhood  taboo  is 
more  of  an  incident  or  an  accident  than  a  system — due  to  a 
hundred  independent  causes  rather  than  subject  to  one  domi- 
nant idea  or  belief.  In  children  we  see  the  diverse  elements, 
which,  flowing  together  and  becoming  arrested,  appear  here 
and  there  all  over  the  world  as  systems  of  '  thou  shalt  not ' ; 
in  childhood  they  are  still  in  a  state  of  flux,  the  systematising 
force  of  religion  and  society  makes  them  stable  in  savagery 
and  barbarism.  A  full  sense  of  the  results  (famine,  disease, 
death,  war,  earthquake,  floods,  etc.),  of  the  violation  of  the 
taboo,  such  as  children  do  not  have,  but  savages  always  can 
have,  is  necessary  for  the  taboo  par  excellence.  Barroil,  whose 
brief  resurne  of  taboo  literature  is  very  good,  recognises  the 
religious  origin  of  the  custom  and  its  subsequent  employment 
as  a  powerful  social  instrument  in  the  hands  of  chiefs,  castes, 


310  THE   CHILD 

secret  societies,  and  other  primitive  clubs  and  associa- 
tions (37). 

Brinton,  looking  on  the  taboo  as  one  of  the  very  earliest 
forms  of  '  the  word  from  the  gods,'  thus  notes  its  gradual 
development  in  diverse  directions  :  '  The  tabu  extends  its  veto 
into  every  department  of  primitive  life.  It  forbids  the  use  of 
certain  articles  of  food  or  raiment ;  it  hallows  the  sacred 
areas ;  it  lays  restrictions  on  marriage,  and  thus  originates 
what  is  known  as  the  totemic  bond  ;  it  denounces  various 
actions,  often  the  most  trivial  and  innocent,  and  thus  lays  the 
ofundation  for  the  ceremonial  law.  The  penalty  for  the 
infraction  of  the  tabu  includes  all  that  flows  from  the  anger  of 
the  gods,  reaching  to  death  itself  (77,  p.  108). 

Mr  E.  S.  Hartland,  who  has  studied  the  taboo  as  it 
appears  in  fairy  tales,  remarks,  with  special  reference  to  the 
sort  dealing  with  '  swan  maidens,'  that  '  among  the  more 
backward  races  the  taboo  appears  generally  simpler  in  form, 
or  is  absent  altogether'  (2S6,  p  325).  If  'pre-social'  man 
ever  practised  the  taboo,  he  must  have  done  so  in  an  utterly 
naive  and  inconsequent  fashion.  Investigations  of  the  ethical 
contents  of  children's  minds  and  children's  ideas  of  right  and 
wrong,  such  as  those  of  Mr  F.  W.  Osborn,  who  in  1894 
studied  some  hundred  boys  and  girls  of  the  city  of  Brooklyn, 
from  nine  to  eleven  years  of  age,  attending  a  public  and 
a  private  school,  and  of  Miss  M.  E.  Schallenberger,  whose 
paper  embodies  the  results  of  the  study  of  some  3000  answer 
papers  of  Californian  boys  and  girls  from  six  to  sixteen  years 
of  age,  afford  us  data  to  compare  with  the  phenomena  of  the 
taboo  among  savage  and  barbarous  races.  Mr  Osborn,  who 
tells  us  that  the  child  is  chiefly  appealed  to  by  concrete  acts, 
and  that  with  both  boys  and  girls  of  the  age  in  question,  obedi- 
ence takes  the  lead  over  truth  as  a  virtue,  observes  further  (467, 
p.  145)  :  '  With  young  children,  right  is  what  is  permitted, 
and  wrong  is  what  is  forbidden.'  Miss  Schallenberger  says, 
among  other  things  (564,  p.  96):  'Young  children  judge  of 
actions  by  their  results  [girls  consider  the  why  more  than 
boys],  older  ones  look  at  the  motives  which  prompt  them.  If 
a  young  child  disobeys  a  command,  and  no  bad  result  follows, 
he  doesn't  see  that  he  has  done  wrong.' 

Some  sort  of  parallelism  holds  here  between  the  child  and 
primitive  man,  as  the  prominent  place  assigned  to  disobedience 
in  children's  stories,  and  the  innumerable  legends  of  savage  and 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  31I 

barbarous  races  as  to  '  man's  first  disobedience,'  further  indi- 
cate. In  many  ways  the  taboo  is  as  important  in  the  child- 
hood of  the  individual  as  it  is  in  the  childhood  of  the  race.  It 
is,  however,  true  that  the  children  of  primitive  races  (like  the 
adults)  are  not  so  fond  of  disobeying  as  seem  to  be  their 
fellows  in  civilised  communities.  The  following  statement  of 
Mr  Curr  (136,  I.  p.  54)  concerning  the  loyalty  of  the 
Australians  to  these  irksome  restraints  emphasises  what  has 
been  said  above  :  *  Now  the  question  is,  what  is  the  hidden 
power  which  secures  the  black's  scrupulous  compliance  with 
custom  in  such  cases?  What  is  it,  for  instance,  which 
prompts  the  hungry  black  boy,  when  out  hunting  with  the 
white  man,  to  refuse  (as  I  have  often  seen  him  do)  to  share 
in  a  meal  of  emu  flesh,  or  in  some  other  sort  of  food  forbidden 
to  those  of  his  age,  when  he  might  easily  do  so  without  fear 
of  detection  by  his  tribe?  What  is  it  that  makes  him  so 
faithfully  observant  of  many  trying  customs  ? 

'  My  reply  is,  that  the  constraining  power  in  such  cases  is 
not  government,  whether  by  chief  or  council,  but  education; 
that  the  black  is  educated  from  infancy  in  the  belief  that 
departure  from  the  customs  of  his  tribe  is  inevitably  followed 
by  one  at  least  of  many  evils,  such  as  becoming  early  grey, 
ophthalmia,  skin  eruptions,  or  sickness;  but,  above  all,  that 
it  exposes  the  offender  to  the  danger  of  death  from  sorcery. 
As  to  the  inducements  which  the  males  of  mature  years  had 
originally,  and  still  have,  for  instilling  such  beliefs  into  the 
minds  of  the  young,  they  are  not  far  to  seek,  as  by  this  course 
they  secure  themselves  the  choicest  articles  of  food,  as  well  as 
other  advantages.' 

Fear  of  consequences  and  of  sorcery  have  declined  in  the 
last  few  centuries,  and  the  child  of  cultured  parents  to-day 
lacks  that  faith  in  the  words  of  his  elders  the  child  had  of  old, 
and  the  taboo  is  broken  with  impunity,  for  the  punishments 
are  not  now  so  certain  and  so  sure  to  follow  from  the  vengeance 
of  the  injured  powers. 

According  to  Schurz  (5S2),  who  has  studied  the  'food 
taboo,'  the  fact  that  it  concerns  much  more  flesh  items  than 
plant  items  is  a  hereditary  phenomenon ;  man,  like  the 
monkey,  was  originally  vegetarian  only,  and  long  after  the 
passage  to  flesh-eating  took  place,  the  old  vegetarian  instinct 
asserted  itself  here  and  there  in  the  pronounced  antipathy  to 
certain     flesh-foods.       Sociological,     religious,     metaphysical 


312  THE   CHILD 

reasons,  however,  in  later  times,  account  for  the  taboo  of 
particular  animals,  parts  of  animals,  etc.,  as  it  did  also  of 
course  for  certain  plants  and  parts  of  plants.  Fasting,  Schurz 
thinks,  is  the  reflection  (part  custom,  part  foresight)  of  famine 
experienced. 

Ostracism,  of  which  classical  institution  of  ancient  Greece 
an  excellent  account  has  been  published  by  (larofalo  (237),  is, 
like  the  referendum,  an  old  time  weapon  of  children  in  their 
play,  and  assuredly  no  politician  ever  felt  worse  over  the  ver- 
dict of  the  city  that  exiled  him  than  the  child  over  the  decision 
of  his  playmates.  No  Greek  was  ever  more  completely 
ostracised  by  his  fellows  than  is  to-day  the  child  who  \s  persona 
non  grata  to  his  fellows.  Street  gangs  can  banish  as  effectively 
as  ever  did  a  Hellenic  city. 

At  the  beginnings  of  child-life  it  is  the  parents  and  the 
immediate  miiieii  who  exercise  the  taboo,  and  imitation  is 
made  to  begin  with  life  itself.  The  role  of  imitation  is  well 
exemplified  in  Mrs  W.  S.  Hall's  Flrsl  500  Days  of  a  Chil(fs 
Life,  in  reference  to  which  Mrs  K.  C  Moore  observes,^  '  there 
is  not  a  case  on  record  in  which  the  child  took  an  initiative,  or 
launched  on  a  wholly  independent  line  of  action.'  So,  too, 
with  the  older  child,  even  among  primitive  peoples. 

Says  Miss  Alice  C  Hetcher,  in  her  interesting  Glimpses  of 
C III  Id  Life  among  the  Omaha  Indians:  'The  Indian  child  is 
born  in  an  atmosphere  charged  with  the  myths  of  his  ances- 
tors. The  ceremonies  connected  with  his  infancy,  his  name, 
and  later  on  his  dress  and  games,  are  more  or  less  emblematic 
of  the  visible  forms  of  the  powers  which  lie  around  man  and 
beyond  his  volition.  This  early  training  makes  easy  the  beliefs 
and  practices  of  the  adult,  even  to  the  extravagances  in- 
dulged in  by  the  so-called  medicine-men'  (213,  p.  115). 

Children's  Ambitions  and  Primitive  Ideals. — Mr  J.  J-  Jeg', 
summing  up  the  general  results  of  the  tests  of  some  8000 
school  children  in  New  York  by  J.  P.  Taylor,  in  California  by 
Miss  H.  M.  Willard,  in  Massachusetts  by  Will  S.  Monroe,  and 
in  Milwaukee,  Wisconsin,  by  himself,  as  to  their  '  hopes,' 
'ambitions,'  'vocational  interests,'  etc.,  observes  (315,  p.  139) : 
'In  these  four  studies  alone  we  have  tested  about  8000  school 
children,  and  there  appears  to  be  a  wonderful  agreement  in  all 
of  them,  as  well  as  in  the  many  smaller  groups  tested,  in 
regard  to  the  types  of  occupations  that  are  most  popular 
1  Psychol  Rev.,  1S97,  p.  558. 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  313 

during  the  earlier  years  of  school  life.  The  trades  involving 
a  large  share  of  '  doing  with  the  hands,'  '  making,'  as  carpentry, 
engineering,  farming,  etc.,  are  most  sought  by  the  boys,  and 
teaching,  dressmaking,  millinery  and  housekeeping  by  the 
girls.'  This  result,  Mr  Jegi  notes,  cannot  be  due  to  the  teach- 
ing of  manual  training  or  of  sewing,  for  the  majority  of  the 
children  in  question  do  not  take  either  of  these,  even  when 
they  happen  to  be  taught  in  the  schools.  Air  Jegi  concludes 
that  '  certainly  from  the  age  of  twelve  years  children  are 
making  a  conscious  introspection  of  their  talents,  and  the 
teacher  cannot  afford  to  neglect  this  opportunity  for  good.' 
Noticeable  also  is  predominance  of  '  like  it '  as  the  reason 
assigned  for  the  favourite  occupation,  even  in  America  money 
influencing  less  than  is  commonly  supposed. 

With  these  ideals  of  childhood  it  is  interesting  to  compare 
the  facts  and  ideals  of  savagery  and  barbarism.  The  first  god 
and  the  first  poet  were  'makers,'  and  the  great  heroes  of 
primitive  peoples  have  always  been  handicraftsmen,  artificers, 
who  fashioned  things,  wrought,  laboured,  etc.  As  the  present 
writer  has  pointed  out  in  his  study  of  the  '  Mythology  and 
Folk-Lore  of  Invention'  (108,  p.  90):  'In  the  languages  of 
many  peoples  "  God  "  is  simply  "  the  creator,  maker,  fashioner, 
framer,  builder,"  and  the  tran>lations  of  the  first  verse  of  the 
first  chapter  of  Genesis  into  primitive  tongues  reveal  Him  as 
the  first  artist  in  many  diverse  spheres  of  invention.  As 
Andrew  Lang  notes,  the  Polynesian  god  and  goddess  to-day, 
like  the  classic  deities  of  Greece  and  Italy,  are  departmental 
in  character — hunters,  smiths,  potters,  etc.  In  the  legends  of 
the  Quiches  of  Guatemala,  accordirg  to  Dr  D.  G.  Brinton,^ 
"  the  Supreme  Being  is  called  Bitol,  the  substantive  form  of 
bit,  to  make,  to  form,  and  Tzakol,  substantive  form  of  fzak,  to 
build,  the  Creator,  the  Constructor  ";  and  the  creation-legends 
of  American  and  other  primitive  peoples  tell  of  the  divine 
artist  who,  like  the  Hebrew  Jhvh  and  the  old  god  of  the 
Greeks,  fashioned  men  (and  animals)  out  of  clay,  carved  them 
out  of  stone  or  wood,  or  remodelled  them  from  existing  things, 
plants  and  animals,  and  often  taught  somewhat  of  these  arts 
to  the  first  men  and  women.' 

Primitive  mythology  is  largely  concerned  with  the  way  the 
gods  use  their  hands,  their  carving,  sculpturing,  engineering 
exploits,  on  the  one  hand,  and  with  the  accomplishments  in 
^  Myths  of  New  World,  3rd  ed.,  1S96,  p.  74. 


314  THE   CHILD 

the  household  arts  and  inventions,  dressmaking,  etc.,  of  the 
female  deities,  in  whom  is  incarnated  the  great  fact  of  '  woman 
the  teacher,'  as  Professor  O.  T.  Mason  has  so  ably  shown. 

Sense  of  the  Body  with  Children  and  Savages. — In  the  early 
life-history  of  the  individual  and  in  that  of  the  race  the  body 
plays  a  most  important  role,  as  indeed  the  etymology  of  our 
common  terms,  somebody,  anybody,  nobody,  everybody,  and 
cognate  expressions  in  other  languages  suggests,  while  corre- 
sponding words  in  which  soul  might  figure  have  not  yet 
appeared  in  pronominal  form  in  our  speech.  We  do,  however, 
as  several  kindred  languages  do  also,  employ  '  soul '  in  the 
sense  of  'individual'  or  'person,'  and  it  is  at  least  curious 
that  perhaps  its  most  common  use  is  in  connection  with 
disasters  at  sea  ('every  soul  perished'),  since  water,  among  so 
many  primitive  peoples,  is  inimical  to  the  human  soul. 
Strangely  enough  we  use  'body'  in  the  sense  of  'corpse,' 
which  last  word  we  have  limited  to  the  meaning  of  'dead 
body,'  except  in  the  case  of  its  other  spelling,  '  corps,'  which 
signifies  'a  body  of  live  men.' 

One  of  the  most  interesting  chapters  in  the  history  of 
human  thought  is  concerned  with  the  development  of  the 
power  'to  believe  and  think  with  all  we  are,  body  as  well  as 
sensibility  and  intelligence,'  as  M.  Jules  Payot  puts  it  (479, 
p.  III).  When  man  had  come  to  be  conscious  of  himself, 
he  'created  gods  in  his  own  image,'  and  spoke  unto  his 
fellows,  'Thou  shalt  worship  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy 
heart,  and  with  all  thy  mind,  and  with  all  thy  soul,  and  with 
all  thy  strength.'  And  not  yet  have  the  gods  ceased  to  be 
the  embodiment  of  man.  Robinsohn,  whose  Psychology  of 
Primitive  Peoples  contains  a  chapter  on  the  form  of  the  soul 
(539)  PP-  37'54))  observes:  'Even  where  the  distinction 
between  soul  and  body  is  accentuated  strongly,  the  first 
appears  in  human  shape.'  Greek  philosophy  sought  to  refine 
the  soul,  but  Greek  folk-thought  gave  it  the  form  of  a  beautiful 
woman  or  of  a  butterfly. 

Says  Professor  Fullerton  :  ^  '  And  from  the  crude  material- 
ism of  the  infant  to  the  crude  animism  of  the  savage  the  step 
is  but  a  short  one.  That  duplicate  of  the  body,  which  in 
dreams  walks  abroad,  sees  and  is  seen,  and  acts  as  the  body 
acts,  has  simply  taken  the  place  of  the  body  as  knower  and 
doer,  and  its  knowing  and  doing  obtain  their  significance  in 
^  Psychol.  Rev.,  IV.  p.  23. 


THE   CHILD  AND   THE  SAVAGE  315 

the  same  experience.  The  thought  of  the  child  is  duphcated 
in  the  new  world  opened  up  by  the  beginnings  of  reflection.' 

Thoreau,  whose  vegetarianism  expresses  itself  in  the 
declaration  that  '  the  human  race  in  its  gradual  improvement 
[will]  leave  off  eating  animals,  as  surely  as  the  savage  tribes 
have  left  off  eating  each  other  when  they  come  in  contact 
with  the  more  civilised,'  says  also,  rather  dogmatically  (638, 
p.  214),  that  'the  gross  feeder  is  a  man  in  the  larva  state; 
and  there  are  whole  nations  in  that  condition,  nations  without 
fancy  or  imagination,  whose  vast  abdomens  betray  them.' 
Like  the  insects,  men  in  their  perfect  state  eat  less  than  in 
their  larval  condition  ;  the  butterfly  stage  is  not  only  more 
beautiful  but  less  voracious  than  the  caterpillar.  Thus  judged, 
the  child  lingers  long  in  the  company  of  the  savage.  A 
prominent  abdomen  is  a  noticeable  characteristic  alike  of 
children,  women,  and  many  primitive  races;  a  ' pot-bellied ' 
child  and  a  'pot-bellied '  savage  are  common  enough.  This 
prominence  of  the  belly  in  the  physical  organism  of  man  has 
been  reflected  in  the  vocabularies  of  primitive  peoples.  In 
more  than  one  such  language  ' forehead '  =  ' belly  of  the  face'; 
'  palm '  =  ' belly  of  the  hand';  'instep '  =  ' belly  of  the  foot'; 
*  inside  '  =  '  belly  of  the  house.' 

In  terms  of  bodily  names  men  and  women  are  lower  in 
the  scale  of  being  than  they  are  from  the  point  of  view  of 
comparative  anatomy  or  psychology.  The  prominence  of 
abdomen  and  stomach,  the  parallelism  of  hand  and  foot, 
lingered  longer  in  language  than  in  the  person  of  man  him- 
self. Here,  too,  physical  evolution  has  often  run  far  ahead  of 
psychical  evolution — names  are  much  more  conservative  than 
the  things  they  designate.  And  the  terminology  of  primitive 
peoples  is  not  seldom  remarkably  similar  to  that  of  the  children 
of  to-day.  We  yet  lack  a  study  of  the  names  of  the  organs 
and  parts  of  the  body,  though  here  and  there  in  a  few  extra- 
European  languages  the  beginnings  of  such  research  appear. 

In  counting  especially,  with  primitive  peoples  as  with 
children,  the  body  and  its  organs  are  utilised — repeated  per- 
haps in  some  of  the  counting-out  games  and  lullabies  of 
the  nursery  and  playground.  Some  of  the  lower  races  em- 
ploy almost  all  the  members  of  the  outward  body  in  their 
systems  of  enumeration.  The  Murray  Islanders,  of  Torres 
Straits,    New    Guinea,^   e.g.,    who   are    said    to    possess    but 

^  lonni.  Antkr.  Inst.,  N.S.,  I.  p.  13. 


3l6  THE   CHILD 

two  numerals  {/lefaf,  'one,'  ;/m,  'two'),  count  higher  than 
that  by  reduphcation,  and  can  reach  31  by  reference  to 
certain  parts  of  tlie  body.  'J'hey  begin  with  the  httle  finger 
of  the  left  hand,  enumerating  the  various  fingers,  the  wrist, 
the  elbow,  the  armpit,  the  shoulder,  the  hollow  above  the 
clavicle,  the  thorax,  and  then  down  the  right  arm  in  similar 
reverse  order  to  the  little  finger  of  the  right  hand — this, 
together  with  the  ten  toes,  giving  them  the  sum  required. 

Counting. — Fingers  and  toes  the  savage  and  the  child 
count  with  ad  libitum,  and  the  parallel  between  the  two  is 
very  interesting.  Professor  Levi  L.  Conant,  in  his  exhaustive 
study  of  the  origin  and  development  of  number-expression, 
speaks  thus  of  finger-counting  :  '  But  the  one  primitive  method 
of  counting  which  seems  to  have  been  almost  universal 
throughout  all  time  is  the  finger  method.  It  is  a  matter  of 
common  experience  and  observation  that  every  child,  when 
he  begins  to  count,  turns  instinctively  to  his  fingers ;  and  with 
these  convenient  aids  as  counters  tallies  ofT  the  little  number 
he  has  in  mind.  This  method  is  at  once  so  natural  and 
obvious  that  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  has  always  been 
employed  by  savage  tribes  since  the  first  appearance  of  the 
human  race  in  remote  antiquity.  All  research  among  un- 
civilised peoples  has  tended  to  confirm  this  view,  were 
confirmation  needed  of  anything  so  patent.' 

The  '  invariable  exception '  crops  out,  however,  for  the 
author  goes  on  to  say :  '  Occasionally  some  exception  to  this 
rule  is  found,  or  some  variation,  such  as  is  presented  by  the 
forest  tribes  of  Brazil,  who,  instead  of  counting  on  the  fingers 
themselves,  count  on  the  joints  of  the  fingers. 

As  the  entire  number-system  of  these  tribes  appears  to  be 
limited  to  three,  this  variation  is  no  cause  for  surprise  (124,  p.  7). 

As  to  method  in  finger-counting,  Dr  Conant  fails  to  find 
any  markedly  uniform  law  of  beginning  either  in  children  or  in 
the  civilised,  but  '  very  young  children  have  a  slight,  though 
not  decided,  preference  for  beginning  with  the  thumb,'  and 
'  more  civilised  people  begin  with  the  little  finger  than  with 
the  thumb.'  Savages,  however,  '  nearly  always  begin  with  the 
little  finger  of  the  left  hand'  (124,  pp.  11-14). 

Out  of  206  children  examined  in  the  five  different  primary 
rooms  m  the  public  schools  of  Worcester,  Mass.,  57  began 
with  the  little  finger  and  149  with  the  thumb — a  result  the 
significance  of  which  is  reduced,  the  author  thinks,  by  the  fact 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  317 

that  'children  of  this  age,  four  to  eight  years,  will  count  in 
either  way,  and  sometimes  seem  at  a  loss  themselves  to  know 
where  to  begin.'  Imitation  also  is  an  important  interfering 
factor.  With  age  the  tendency  of  young  children  '  to  hold  the 
palm  of  the  hand  downward,  and  then  begin  with  the  thumb ' 
disappears,  and  'at  the  age  of  twelve  or  thirteen  the  tendency  is 
decidedly  in  the  direction  of  beginning  with  the  little  finger. 
Fully  three-fourths  of  all  persons  above  that  age  will  be  found 
to  count  from  the  little  finger  toward  the  thumb,  thus  reversing 
the  proportion  that  was  obtained  in  the  primary  schoolrooms 
examined.' 

Another  interesting  point  brought  out  by  Professor  Conant 
is  the  fact  ('the  outgrowth  of  the  universal  right-handedness  of 
the  human  race'),  that  in  finger-counting,  'whether  among 
children  or  adults,  the  beginning  is  made  on  the  left  hand, 
except  in  the  case  of  left-handed  individuals ;  and  even  then 
the  start  is  almost  as  likely  to  be  on  the  left  hand  as  on  the 
right.'  The  thumb-preference  in  early  childhood  may  possibly 
be  due  to  the  early  acquaintance  with  that  member  of  the 
hand  when  the  child  is  in  the  '  thumb-sucking  period.' 

Child  Ideas  and  Frimifive  Mythology. — I'he  thoughts  and 
questionings  of  the  growing  self  in  the  child  may  well  be  studied 
in  connection  with  the  primitive  cosmologies  and  mythologies, 
the  developing  consciousness  of  the  race  compared  with  that  of 
the  individual.  Among  the  many  questions  asked  of  them- 
selves or  of  others  by  young  children,  as  reported  by  President 
Hall  in  his  suggestive  paper  on  the  sense  of  self  in  children, 
are  the  following,  which  might  readily  enough  stand  as  texts 
for  many  of  the  myths  and  tales  of  savage  and  barbarous 
peoples  (275,  p.  364):  I.  Why  do  we  breathe?  Do  animals, 
plants,  God,  etc.,  breathe?  What  is  breath?  2.  How  could  I 
get  out  of  my  skin  ?  How  would  I  look  if  I  were  out  of  my 
skin?  Could  I  get  out  of  my  skin  and  another  get  in  ?  3. 
Why  am  I  John  or  Henry?  How  funny  it  would  be  if  I  were 
Edward  or  Robert !  4.  Is  it  real,  or  am  I  dreaming?  How  do 
I  know  it's  real?  Am  I  real,  or  only  make-believe  like  dolls? 
5.  Why  can't  I  see  myself  think  when  I  close  my  eyes  ?  What 
do  I  do  when  I  think  ?  What  is  it  makes  my  legs  walk  ?  6. 
Why  am  I  the  same  as  I  was  when  a  baby?  What  makes  me 
the  way  I  am?  Why  am  I  not  she,  or  why  is  not  he  me?  If 
papa  had  married  B.,  whose  girl  would  I  have  been  ?  What 
name  would  I  have  had  if  C.  had  been  my  mother?     7.  W'hy 


3i8  tup:  child 

was  I  not  M.  (another  girl  born  the  same  day)  ?  8.  Am  I  not 
a  dog  straightened  out  ?  What  was  I  before  I  came  into  the 
world  ?  You  wanted  a  boy,  but  did  not  know  it  was  going  to 
be  me.  I  am  glad  it  was  papa  who  found  me  before  anyone 
else,  for  they  might  have  changed  me.  9.  Why  are  we  in  the 
world,  anyhow  ? 

Here  we  have  a  matrix  out  of  wliich  might  easily  come 
the  obserVation-myths  and  explanation-myths  of  the  American 
Indians,  the  Fourquoi  of  French  folk-lore,  and  a  mass  of 
similar  primitive  human  thought  all  over  the  world.  Egger 
exaggerates,  however,  when  he  writes:  'In  the  pupils  of  seven 
or  eight  years  we  have  beneath  our  eyes  a  Hindoo  of  the  Vedic 
age,  a  Greek  of  the  time  of  Homer,  a  Hebrew  of  the  time  of 
Moses'  (181,  p.  93). 

The  following  sayings  and  phrases  of  children,  recorded  in 
the  Russell-Haskell  collection,  are  in  type  and  character  such 
as  to  invite  comparison  with  the  frame-work  of  the  folk-lore 
and  legends  of  primitive  peoples  all  over  the  globe  (291, 
PP-  19.  29,  35'  21,  23,  19,  42,  44,  46,  136):— 

1.  [5  or  6  yrs.].  Jennie  said,  'What  makes  people  sleepy?' 
Hilda  replied,  'Those  little  hairs  on  your  lids.  Every  time 
they  come  against  your  eye,  they  make  you  sleepy.' 

2.  [3  yrs.].  When  the  hot  water  faucet  is  first  turned  on, 
the  water  spouts  out  in  jets.  S.  was  in  the  kitchen  when  her 
mother  turned  on  the  hot  water,  and  she  exclaimed,  'Oh, 
mamma,  the  water  is  choked ;  see  how  it  coughs  ! ' 

3.  [4  yrs.].  J.,  seeing  the  water  running  in  the  gutter, 
exclaimed,  '  Oh  !  the  water  is  awake  now ;  it  was  asleep  last 
night.' 

4.  [5  yrs.].  Mabel  and  her  mother  were  walking  in  a 
pasture.  They  came  to  a  very  crooked  tree,  and  Mabel  said, 
'  Oh  !  see  that  tree  sitting  down  ! ' 

5.  [i  I  yrs.  5  mos.].  E.  '  Oh !  sir,  they've  plastered  that 
tree  (meaning  a  white  birch).  /.  'What  makes  you  think  so?' 
E.  '  Because  when  I  rubbed  my  hand  on  it,  the  white  comes 
off  on  it.  See  !  There's  a  limb  that's  black,  where  they  forgot 
to  plaster.' 

6.  [2  yrs.  8  mos.].  The  first  time  F.  noticed  the  moon  it 
was  full.  Soon  after,  she  saw  it  during  the  first  quarter  and 
ran  to  her  mother,  saying,  '  Oh,  mamma !  G.  [her  little 
brother]  has  meddled  with  the  moon.' 

7.  [4  yrs.].     S.  and  I  were  sitting  out  of  doors  one  evening, 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE    SAVAGE  319 

and  S.  happened  to  see  the  moon  come  out  from  behind  a 
cloud.  'See,  see,'  she  cried,  'the  moon  has  waked  up.'  The 
next  evening  was  cloudy,  and,  as  we  were  standing  by  the 
window,  I  said,  '  Where  is  the  moon  to-night,  S.  ?  '■ — '  Oh  ! '  she 
replied,  '  it  is  asleep,  and  hasn't  waked  up  yet.'  Then,  after  a 
pause,  'I  guess  it's  tired  to-night.' 

8.  [5  or  6  yrs.].  L.,  being  asked  one  cloudy  day  what 
made  the  sky  so  grey,  answered,  'Ashes.' 

9.  [5  yrs.,  II  mos.].  CMd.  'I  know  what  makes  the 
sky ;  it's  the  smoke.'  He  had  been  riding  in  the  cars,  and 
noticed  the  smoke  rising  from  engines. 

lo-  [5  yrs-,  7  mos.].  J^.  'Is  this  sponge  an  animal, 
mamma?'  Mother.  'Yes.'  F.  '  I  can  see  where  they  shot 
him  '  (pointing  to  one  of  the  largest  holes  in  the  sponge). 

11.  [6  yrs.].  A.  was  away  from  home  and  was  shown  some 
ducks  a  few  days  old.  She  said,  '  Why  don't  you  have  their 
feet  unsevved  ? ' 

12.  [6  yrs.].  I  was  walking  along  the  street  with  J.,  and, 
as  it  was  cold,  he  could  see  his  breath.  After  looking  at  it  a 
while  he  turned  to  me  and  said,  '  Look  !  I  am  good,  'cause 
my  breath  goes  up  to  heaven.' 

13-  [7  yrs.].  H.  'I  think  I  can  tell  you  something  about 
animals.'  /.  '  Well,  what  is  it  ? '  H.  '\  have  thought  what 
makes  animals  stick  up  their  tails  when  men  go  to  hunt  them 
with  a  lasso  or  a  gun.  If  they  sticked  them  straight  out  the 
men  could  catch  hold  of  it.' 

14.  [7  or  8  yrs.].  R.  was  looking  at  my  geology;  he  finds 
the  picture  of  an  elephant's  skeleton,  and  asks  what  that  is. 
'An  elephant.'— ' Oh  !  yes,  an  elephant  without  its  clothes.' 
After,  he  said,  'Skin  is  clothes.' 

15.  [7  yrs.  2  mos.].  Louis  said,  'This  is  the  sun.'  He 
stood  up  straight,  squinted  his  eyes,  and  drew  up  his  mouth  at 
the  corners.     Then  he  turned  round  and  round. 

An  interesting  summary  of  the  more  recent  literature  relat- 
ing to  the  cosmologic  and  cosmogonic  ideas  of  primitive 
peoples,  useful  for  comparison  with  such  data  as  those  cited 
above,  is  given  by  von  Andrian  (10,  p.  128).  The  author 
looks  upon  these  myths  and  legends  as  not  merely  'metaphors, 
symbols,  products  of  linguistic  confusion,  plays  of  an  unbridled 
imagination,  etc.,'  but  the  first  products  of  the  necessity  to 
explain,  strongly  developed  even  among  the  primitive  peoples, 
the  very  real  expressions,  to  be  taken  literally,  of  man  in  the 


320  THE   CHILD 

presence  of  nature  often  completely  dominating  his  social  life 
and  colouring  all  other  products  of  his  mental  activities.  Other 
very  valuable  data  for  comparative  study  are  to  be  found  in  the 
extended  discussion  of  cosmological  ideas,  religious  and  philo- 
sophical conceptions  of  primitive  peoples,  published  in  1898 
by  Dr  L.  Frolx-nius. 

Oropldly. — The  orophily,  the  delight  in  being  upon  a  mound, 
a  height,  a  hill,  and  commanding  the  universe  around,  or 
merging  oneself  into  it,  or  of  looking  up  at  the  hill-tops  where 
they  seem  to  touch  the  clouds  or  the  blue  sky  itself,  and  feeling 
oneself  irresistibly  drawn  towards  them— Ruskin's  love  of  hill- 
scenery,  Byron's  high-mountain  feeling,  Shakespeare's  heaven- 
kissing  hill,  etc. — are  familiar  phenomena  of  the  psychic  life  of 
later  childhood,  a  part,  perhaps,  of  that  'nature-love,' which 
some,  with  Mr  Hoyt,  would  have  us  consider  alike  the  source 
of  the  rich  and  full  mythologies  of  primitive  people  and  the 
very  vital  myth-world  of  childhood,  the  inspiration  of  true 
science  and  true  religion  (306). 

The  height-cult  (reverence  and  worship  of  hill  and  moun- 
tain) of  humanity  has  been  made  the  subject  of  an  extended 
study  by  von  Andrian,  dealing  especially  with  the  peoples  of 
Asia  and  of  Europe  (12).  The  author  recognises  two  funda- 
mental ideas  as  lying  at  the  bottom  of  the  world-wide  cult  of 
eminences,  hills,  crags  and  mountains:  i.  The  animistic  (the 
mountain  is  alive,  a  being  of  power  and  might,  a  spirit,  and  his 
dwelling-place)— a  belief  which,  as  the  unnumbered  European 
legends  of  '  mountain-spirits '  show,  survives  long  even  among 
the  civilised  races  of  man  ;  2.  The  cosmic  (hills  and  mountains 
are  'steps  unto  heaven';  the  boundary  between  heaven  and 
earth  ;  the  entrances  to  heaven  ;  the  bearers-up  of  heaven  ;  the 
intermediaries  as  to  light,  clouds,  etc.,  between  heaven  and 
earth,  the  gods  and  men  ;  the  seat  of  heaven  and  the  dwelling- 
place  of  the  gods,  Olympus;  the  image  and  symbol  of  the 
universe,  the  world-mountain,  the  earthly  Paradise,  etc.).  The 
first  of  these  conceptions  seems  to  be  the  most  widespread  and 
is  probably  the  older,  while  the  variety  of  mountain-scenery 
and  the  extent  and  diversity  of  mountain-life,  have  permitted 
all  sorts  of  connections  and  rapprochements  with  the  mythology 
and  folk-lore  of  forest  and  lea,  fountain,  lake  and  stream,  plant, 
stone  and  beast.  Many  primitive  peoples,  like  so  many 
children  to-day,  have  a  quick  eye,  as  their  mountain-names 
and  the  incidents  in  their  myths  reveal,  for  the  resemblances 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  32 1 

between  the  form  and  outlines  of  mountains,  etc.,  and  the 
shape  of  man  or  beast  or  the  various  organs  of  either.  This 
animistic  view  of  the  mountain  stands  out  from  beneath  the 
superincumbent  mythologic  ideas  of  later  ages  as  original  and 
springing  ultimately  from  the  common  animism-fund  of  primi- 
tive man.  The  cosmic  concept,  the  author  thinks,  is  not  so 
widely  prevalent,  nor  so  original  with  the  races  of  men,  has 
been  more  frequently  transferred  from  people  to  people,  and 
more  divergently  developed  in  various  parts  of  the  world  than 
the  animistic,  and  also  more  subject  to  special  development  by 
particular  tribes  or  nations.  That  the  cosmic  follows  the 
animistic  concept  of  hill  and  mountain  in  the  evolution  of  the 
individual,  as  in  that  of  the  race,  is  very  probable,  although  a 
parallelism  of  origin  and  development  is  not  at  all  impossible. 

Analogy. — Professor  Joseph  Jastrow  1  calls  attention  to  the 
great  role  of  this  principle  in  the  intellectual  products  of  savage 
and  barbarous  peoples— omens,  divination,  dream-interpretation, 
folk-niedicine,  doctrine  of  signatures,  astrology,  magic  arts,  etc., 
and  in  the  mental  life  of  the  ignorant  classes  among  civilised 
peoples,  together  with  the  child  as  representing  the  first  begin- 
nings of  the  human  race.    As  Jastrow  remarks  :  1  '  That  children 
are  fond  of  reasoning  by  analogy  there  can  be  no  doubt ;  their 
confusion  of  fact  with  fancy ;  their  lack  of  scientific  knowledge 
and  the  ability  to  refer  effects  to  proper  causes;  their  great  love 
for  sound  effects  and  play  of  words,  the  earnestness  of  their 
play-convictions— all  these  furnish  a  rich  soil  for  the  growth  of 
such  habits  of  thought  as  we  are  now  considering  '(313,  p.  341). 
But  the  case  is  by  no  means  so  clear  as  many  writers  have 
supposed,  for  :  '  On  the  other  hand,  the  influence  of  their  adult 
companions,  of  their  civilised  surroundings,  of  the  growth  of 
the  make-believe  sentiment  by  which  the  laws  of  the  real  world 
are  differentiated  from  those  of  fairy-land,  make  it  diflicult  to 
pronounce  as  an  argument  by  analogy  what  may  really  be  a 
half-conscious  play  of  fancy  or  jugglery  of  words  and  ideas.' 
And  these  words  apply  to  the   consideration  of  analogy  as 
present  in  the  thought-products  of  savagery,   except  that  in 
most  cases  the  civilised  surroundings  have  long  been  absent,  or 
only  recently  present. 

Dr  Jastrow  goes  on  to  say : 

'  Vv' hen  I  admit  that  I  found  extreme  difficulty  in  collecting 

^  In  his  address  (before  the  American  Association  for  the  Advancement 
of  Science,  1891)  on  '  The  Natural  History  of  Analogy.' 


322  THE   CHILD 

even  passable  arguments  by  analogy  in  children,  I  must  accom- 
pany the  admission  with  the  conviction  that  the  difficulty  is  due 
to  the  absence  of  good  collections  of  children's  original  and 
typical  sayings  and  doings.  What  fond  parents  are  apt  to 
observe,  and  newspaper  paragraphers  to  record,  are  sayings 
that  amuse  by  a  (juaintness  or  their  assumption  of  a  worldly 
wisdom  beyond  their  years,  while  the  truly  suggestive  traits 
pass  unrecorded  for  lack  of  psychologically  informed  ob- 
servers. 

'The  little  boy  who,  when  asked  his  age,  said  he  was  nine 
when  he  stood  on  his  feet  but  six  when  he  stood  on  his  head, 
because  an  inverted  9  makes  a  6,  was  certainly  reasoning  by 
analogy,  however  little  faith  he  may  have  had  in  the  correct- 
ness of  his  reasoning.  The  children  who  believe  that  butter 
comes  from  butterflies,  and  grass  from  grasshoppers,  beans 
from  bees,  and  kittens  from  pussy-willows  (Stanley  Hall),  may 
be  simply  misled  by  sound  -  analogies,  but  when  Sir  John 
Lubbock  tells  us  of  a  little  girl  saying  to  her  brother,  "If 
you  eat  so  much  goose  you  will  be  quite  silly,"  and  adds  that 
"  there  are  perhaps  few  children  to  whom  the  induction  would 
not  seem  perfectly  legitimate,"  we  appreciate  that  such  argu- 
ments, so  closely  paralleling  the  superstitions  of  savages,  may 
be  more  real  to  children  than  we  suspect.' 

The  ever-increasing  literature  of  '  child-study '  seems  to 
furnish  much  evidence  tending  to  show  that  such  children, 
by  no  means  few  in  the  land,  are  much  more  naive  than  the 
barbarian  or  the  savage. 

Symbolism. — That  ideas  and  symbols  are  often  much  slower 
to  change  than  social  facts  and  conditions  is,  as  Ferrero  points 
out,  amply  illustrated  by  the  evolution  of  marriage,  the  story  of 
the  duel  and  the  ordeal,  in  fact  by  legal  formalities  in  general. 
The  evolution  of  such  human  institutions  teaches  anew  '  the 
truth  that  they  are  not  created  by  man  according  to  a  precon- 
ceived idea  and  plan,  or  with  a  clear  consciousness  and  know- 
ledge of  the  definite  ends  towards  which  his  activity  is  tending.' 
According  to  Ferrero  :  '  It  was  not  the  ideas  of  contract  or  of 
judicial  discussion  that,  in  marriage  and  primitive  law-process, 
substituted  purchase  and  judgment  for  capture  and  the  duel,  but 
purchase  and  judgment  substituted  for  capture  and  the  duel, 
caused  gradually  to  arise  in  the  human  mind,  by  slow  sug- 
gestion, the  idea  of  contract  and  of  judicial  discussion.' 
Human  ideas  are,  in  fact,  no  more  logical  than  other  natural 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  323 

phenomena ;  Nature  herself  burdens  a  plant  or  an  animal  for 
ages  with  a  useless  organ  or  a  troublesome  excrescence ;  she 
is  like  man,  who  keeps  the  iinpeditnenta  (in  institutions,  symbols, 
etc.)  of  dead  and  decadent  civilisations  or  extinct  barbarisms. 
The  lack  of  logic,  which  many  have  thought  to  be  character- 
istic of  the  child,  or  of  primitive  people,  has  been  attributed 
by  the  philosopher  Ardigo  to  the  human  race  as  a  whole;  the 
child  is  only  a  liitle  less  logical  (often  a  great  deal  more)  than 
his  father  or  his  mother,  the  savage  by  no  means  necessarily 
less  so  than  the  civilised  man  or  woman  (199,  pp.  163-185). 

The  '  dangers  of  symbolic  interpretation '  have  been 
emphasised  by  Colonel  Garrick  IMallery.^  The  cross,  the 
numbers  4,  7,  12,  the  algebraic  symbols,  the  arbitrary  signs  of 
arithmetical  notation,  have  had  read  into  them  a  world  of 
mysticism,  equalled  only  by  some  of  the  achievements  of 
children,  who  see  in  letters  of  the  alphabet  and  the  arithmetical 
numbers  o-io  all  sorts  of  animated  beings  and  objects  in 
nature.  Dr  D.  G.  Brinton,  -  in  his  study  of  the  origin  of 
sacred  numbers,  holds  that  'the  associations  which  attach 
sacredness  to  these  numbers  [3,  9,  33;  4,  7,  13,  etc.]  arise  in 
the  human  mind,  of  the  same  character,  everywhere  and  at 
all  times,  so  that  no  theory  of  borrowing  is  needed  to  explain 
identities  or  similarities  in  this  respect.'  In  the  repetition- 
games  and  rhymes  of  children  something  of  this  numeral 
sacrosanctity  inheres.  With  this  tendency  to  sameness  in  the 
selection  of  sacred  numbers  by  the  races  of  men  it  is  interesting 
to  contrast  the  'endless  diversity'  and  'mutual  unintelligibihty ' 
of  the  diagrams  ('number  forms,'  calendar-schemes,  etc.),  by 
means  of  which  the  succession  and  interrelation  of  the  numerals, 
the  days  of  the  week,  the  days  of  the  months,  the  months  and 
seasons  of  the  year,  the  years  of  the  century,  the  centuries  of 
the  Christian  era,  the  letters  of  the  alphabet,  are  usually 
recorded  in  the  mind  by  many  people  old  and  young.  The 
proportion  of  individuals  having  such  forms  seems  to  vary 
with  nationality,  sex,  age,  etc.  Women  possess  them  rather 
more  frequently  (in  the  proportion  of  8  to  7),  while  the  percent- 
age decreases  somewhat  with  age  (adults  averaging  i  in  15, 
children  i  in  12).  The  subject  has  been  investigated  by 
Galton,  Flournoy,  Patrick.  Miss  Calkins  and  others,  and  very 
recetuly  by  Dr    D.  E.  Phillips  (492,    p.  507),  whose   article 

^  Trans.  Anthr.  Soc,  Washington,  Vol.  I.  pp.  71-79. 

^  Aiiicr.  Aiithro/>.,\lU.  p.   iV.S. 

22 


324  THE  CHILD 

summarises  the  data  and  theories  about  'number  forms,'  with 
the  addition  of  some  new  contributions.  According  to  Dr 
riiillips,  children  have  more  week  and  month  forms  than 
adults,  while  many  individuals  have  more  than  one  form  of 
some  kind,  and  others  have  month -forms,  week -forms,  etc., 
but  no  number-forms.  Of  course,  the  clock,  blackboard,  slate, 
book,  block,  multiplication  -  table,  chart,  etc.,  in  the  school- 
room or  at  home,  are  often  found  to  have  suggested  some  of 
these  forms,  so  also,  perhaps,  counting  on  the  fingers  and  other 
primitive  mathematical  devices,  but  since  so  many  children 
'can  count  100  before  they  learn  to  recognise  anything  written 
or  printed,' the  origin  of  very  many  'number-forms'  must  be 
placed  at  a  very  early  period  of  childhood,  and  their  utility 
during  school-life  is  often  clearly  apparent,  although  many  em- 
ploy them  'just  as  we  use  language,  without  ever  thinking  that 
they  are  useful  as  a  medium  of  thought.'  It  is  not  certain  that 
these  forms  are  to  be  found  more  commonly  among  more 
imaginative  or  more  intellectually  active  individuals,  or  among 
those  mathematically-gifted  than  among  other  classes  of  ])eople, 
and  some  of  them  '  may  originate  quite  late  in  life,  becoming 
much  elaborated  by  use  and  time.'  Dr  Phillips  holds  that 
'  nearly  all  persons  possess  some  idea  of  extension  of  num- 
bers, more  or  less  indefinite,'  and  asks,  'Can  early  association 
explain  this  tendency  to  cast  the  number  series  into  spatial 
form?' — making  the  existence  of  number-forms  another  justi- 
fication for  the  'general  tendency  to  base  primary  mathematics 
again  (Euclid-wise)  more  and  more  on  geometry.' 

Jmaginafion. — Long  ago  Plutarch  wrote  concerning  children 
that  they  are  'better  pleased  with  the  sight  of  rainbows,  comets, 
and  those  halos  that  encircle  the  sun  and  moon  than  to  see  the 
sun  and  moon  themselves  in  their  splendour,'  and  there  are 
primitive  peoples  and  portions  of  all  civilised  communities 
also,  who,  like  children,  are  'taken  with  riddles,  abstruse  words 
and  figurative  speeches.'  ^ 

The  imagination  of  the  child,  according  to  Miss  Lombroso 
(369,  p.  149),  is  'not  the  effect  of  a  great  intellectual  energy, 
but  proceeds  rather  (and  it  is  this  that  characterises  it)  from 
a  defect  of  energy,  from  the  lack  of  inhibition,  for  which  reason 
the  thought  goes  by  leaps  and  bounds,  by  casual  associations 
of  words  and  ideas.'  In  other  terms:  'The  child  does  not 
invent  or  create  anything  new  and  original,  but,  being  exces- 
1  Morals,  Vol.  HI.  p.  103. 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  325 

sively  suggestionable,  passes  with  the  greatest  facihty  from  one 
impression  to  another.'  This  characterises  his  early  writings 
no  less  than  it  does  his  early  speech.  In  the  writings  of 
children  at  this  period  (5-7  years)  an  unbridled  imagination 
and  a  clear,  exact  sense  of  observation  are  the  chief  peculi- 
arities :  '  With  his  new  mind,  burning  before  every  fact,  the 
child  finds  himself,  as  it  were,  before  a  new  scene  that  excites 
him,  sharpens  his  attention,  and  for  him  examining  things  and 
cataloguing  them  in  his  little  head,  are  a  sort  of  easy  and 
diverting  play.  He  observes,  too,  many  things  that  escape 
us,  with  whom  seeing  them  so  often  has  dulled  our  interest  in 
them.'  Often  his  imagination  lets  him  wander  away  on  the 
paths  of  the  strangest  associations  of  ideas,  and  his  observation 
becomes  so  minute  and  exact  as  to  resemble  an  auctioneer's 
catalogue  or  an  anatomical  inventory ;  often,  too,  feeling  and 
art  are  but  scantily  represented,  being  the  last,  in  reality,  to 
manifest  themselves  here.  Guyau  observes  (259a,  p.  147) : 
'The  child  retains  and  reproduces  images  much  more  than  he 
invents  and  thinks.' 

According  to  Andrew  Lang  ^  '  the  early  form  of  human 
fancy,  the  form  conspicuous  among  backward  races,  peasants, 
fishers  and  children,  is  undeniably  the  source  of  all  the  civilised 
poetry  and  romance,'  for  '  early  man,  and  simple,  natural  men 
and  children  regard  all  nature  as  animated.'  Dickens,  Lang 
thinks,  shows  in  his  genius  'a  relapse  on  the  early  human  intel- 
lectual condition.  He  sees  all  things  in  that  vivid,  animated 
way,  and  inanimate  objects  play  living  parts  in  his  books  more 
frequently  than  in  any  other  modern  works,  except  Hans 
Andersen's  fairy  tales.'  Moreover,  the  imagination  of  Dickens 
'at  times  went  back  to  what  is  probably  the  primitive  condi- 
tion of  actual  hallucination,'  and  his  dreams  were  '  wonderfully 
distinct  and  coherent.'  He  possessed  also  an  'intense  power 
of  imaginative  vision  and  audition.  He  saw  his  characters, 
and  heard  them  speak  ...  he  thought  in  pictures,  not  in 
words.  .  .  .  His  fancy  acted  with  the  freshness  of  the  morning 
of  the  world.' 

That  the  genius  of  Lewis  Carroll  and  Edward  Lear,  who 
have  entertained  so  many  children  of  both  the  larger  and  the 
smaller  growth,  lies  almost  within  the  grasp  of  childhood  itself 
is  proved  by  books  like  Animal  Land  (128),  wherein,  with  the 
mother's  assistance,  are  recorded  the  'impossible  animals,'  their 
^  Littel's  Living  Age,  CCXX.  p.  268. 


326  THE   CHILD 

names  and  their  characteristics  of  action  and  movement, 
evolved  from  the  imagination  of  a  Httle  girl  of  four.  The 
names :  Rikka,  junn,  beeda,  womp,  jappa,  melly,  burkan, 
cattaby,  pokiban,  didd,  booba,  jinkatee,  sleem,  penna,  modd, 
etc.,  look  almost  as  if  they  might  have  been  drawn  from  the 
animal  names  of  some  Siberian  or  Central  Asiatic  tribe.  The 
explanation  of  the  names  and  acts,  however,  would  fail  to  find 
their  fellows  in  the  zoological  mythology  of  any  people  outside 
of  Bishop  Hall's  '  Mundus  Alter  et  Idem,'  or  the  Middle 
Ages.  Some  of  them  have  not  a  little  of  the  real  child-touch. 
The  melly  that  '  is  so  surprised  and  eats  toffee  ' ;  the  pokibans 
that  '  eats  almonds  and  jumps  ' ;  the  ding  that  '  is  so  happy  ' ; 
the  burkan  that  'is  a  nasty  biting  thing,  and  there  is  no  more 
about  it.'  The  '  atavism  '  of  Carroll  and  Lear  is  more  common 
than  generally  admitted,  not  appearing  in  print  as  often  as  it 
occurs. 

The  role  of  the  imagination  among  many  savage  and  bar- 
barous peoples  is  very  great.  Captain  Spicer,  a  whaler,  who 
mingled  with  the  Eskimo,  told  Professor  Mason  that  they  often 
make  invention  a  part  of  their  sport.  They  go  out  to  certain 
distant  places,  and,  having  imagined  themselves  in  certain  straits, 
theycompare  notes  as  to  what  each  one  would  do.  Theyactually 
make  experiments,  setting  one  another  problems  in  arithmetic 
(411,  p.  23). 

With  this  may  be  compared  the  question  put  by  the 
culture-hero  of  the  Micmacs,  Gluskap,  to  the  animals  on 
the  eve  of  man's  creation  :  '  What  would  you  do  if  you  met 
a  man?'  and  the  familiar  tests  and  interrogatories  of  our 
fairy-tales. 

How  close  the  savage  is  here  to  the  child  may  be  seen 
from  the  '  I'll  stump  you  to  do — ,' '  let's  play — ,' '  say  something,' 
'  do  anything,'  etc.,  of  children's  sports  and  games.  Abundant 
material  for  comparative  study  might  be  found  in  the  nith- 
songs  of  the  Eskimo,  the  songs  of  the  secret  societies  of  the 
American  Indians,  the  competitions  in  proverbs,  verse-making, 
jesting,  etc.,  of  the  lower  classes  of  the  people  in  all  civilised 
communities,  and  the  artificial  sides  of  all  of  these  as  seen  in  the 
exercises  of  our  schools  at  the  present  day.  The  varieties  of  the 
imagination  among  primitive  peoples,  racially  and  individually, 
are  very  great,  probably  quite  as  great  as  those  noted  among 
civilised  children  and  adults  by  Queyrat,  Burnham,  Saint-Paul, 
and  others  who  have  studied  the  subject  since  Rivarol  more 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  327 

than  a  century  ago  noted  the  fact  that  some  men  in  medita- 
tion seemed  to  hear  their  thoughts  from  a  voice  within  them, 
while  others  read  tliem,  language  for  these  last  being  a  picture 
(26,  pp.  17,  32).  _ 

A  plea  for  the  'Hygienic  Use  of  the  Imagination  has 
been  made  by  Sir  J.  Crichton-Browne/  who  points  out  the 
full  significance  of  the  fact  that  '  idiocy  is  just  the  opposite  of 
phantasy.'  The  cultivation  of  the  imagination  has  been  very 
much  neglected  by  men  of  science  (physicians  especially), 
although  Faraday  and  Darwin,  Akenside  and  Weir-Mitchell 
afford  examples  of  its  fertile  employment.  That  the  stimula- 
tion and  cultivation  of  the  imagination  in  children  can  be 
overdone  is  easily  intelligible ;  in  fact,  by  seeking  overmuch  to 
cultivate  the  imagination  one  may  give  a  death-blow  to  that 
naive  yet  genial  appreciation  which  is  the  beauty  of  the  child's 
liking  for  poetry,  that  wonderful  imaginative  work  of  man. 
One  cannot  fail  to  have  something  of  this  feeling  in  reading 
Mr  Halleck's  chapters  on  sensory  training,  especially  those  on 
Special  Sensory  Training'  (281,  pp.  130-14S),  'Cerebral  De- 
y-elopment  by  the  Formation  of  Images'  (281,  pp.  149-170), 
where  the  author  goes  much  further  than  his  predecessors, 
Lecoq  de  Boisbaudran  and  Francis  Galton,  in  the  way  of  re- 
producing images.  Such  '  use  of  literature  to  cultivate  imaging 
power'  is  often  almost  atavistic  in  its  efforts  to  decompose 
into  visions,  odours,  smells,  sounds  and  movements  what 
Milton,  Shakespeare  and  Tennyson  please  us  with  all  at  once. 
This  art  the  genius  is  wise  enough  to  use,  the  child  near 
enough  to  the  genius  to  feel.  This  anatomy  of  the  imagination 
must  not  be  carried  too  far,  or  it  becomes  the  veriest  artificiality 
scorned  by  savage  and  child  alike. 

Nature- Feelings. — It  is  an  all  too  common  idea  that  the 
'  lower  races  '  of  men,  like  children,  have  little  or  no  apprecia- 
tion of  the  beauty  and  the  majesty  of  Nature.  Hoffding  does  not 
hesitate  to  declare  that  '  children  and  savages  have,  as  a  rule, 
no  sense  for  the  beauties  of  Nature'  (298,  p.  266),  and  Ribot 
tells  us  that  'in  primitive  poetry  man  is  in  the  foreground. 
Nature  is  only  an  accessory.  Little  of  description,  a  few 
verses  of  epithet,  suffice  to  create  it '  (536,  p.  336).  Psycholo- 
gists see  fit  to  date  the  rise  of  real  nature-feeling  from  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  so  far  as  the  masses  of  the 
people  are  concerned,  and  to  credit  Rousseau  with  being  about 
\  Brit.  Med.  Joiirn.,  Aug.  1889. 


328  Tin-:   CHILD 

the  first  to  arouse  sucli  a  sentiment  (536,  p.  267).  The  ancient 
Greeks,  however,  and  the  Chinese  had  certainly  a  rather  keen 
sense  of  natural  grandeur  and  beauty,  no  less  than  had  the 
Hebrews,  while,  as  IJiese,  who  has  discussed  the  'Develop- 
ment of  the  I'eeling  for  Nature,'  remarks,  'the  naluie  lyric  is 
primitive  and  connnon  to  all  peoples.'  Concernint;  even 
Rousseau,  '  the  interpreter  of  Nature,'  as  he  has  been  called, 
Professor  Patten  has  remarked  very  recently  (476,  p.  455) : 
'  Rousseau  was  a  man  of  a  more  primitive  type  than  the 
leaders  of  the  preceding  period  of  French  thought.  He  had 
many  of  the  characteristics  of  a  savage,  and  his  concept  of 
Nature  belonged  to  a  much  earlier  epoch.' 

Of  the  Zuni  Indians  of  New  Mexico  Mrs  Stevenson  tells  us  : 
'  Our  concepts  of  the  universe  are  altogether  different  from 
those  of  primitive  man  ;  we  understand  phenomena  through 
philosophical  laws,  while  he  accounts  for  them  by  analogy  ;  we 
live  in  a  world  of  reality,  he  in  a  world  of  mysticism  and  sym- 
bolism ;  he  is  deeply  impressed  by  his  natural  environment, 
every  object  with  him  possessing  a  spiritual  life,  so  that  celestial 
bodies,  mountains,  rocks,  the  flora  of  the  earth,  and  the  earth 
itself  are  to  him  quite  different  from  what  they  are  to  us.  The 
sturdy  pine,  delicate  sapling,  fragrant  blossom,  giant  rock 
and  tiny  pebble  play  alike  their  part  in  the  mystic  world  of 
aboriginal  man.' 

This  is  admirably  exemplified  in  the  Zuni  creation-myths 
recorded  by  Mr  Gushing,  and  the  Polynesian  legends  pub- 
lished by  Mr  Gill.  In  these  and  other  productions  of  the 
primitive  imagination  we  find  the  glory  of  the  seasons,  the  life 
of  beast,  bird,  insect,  the  beauty  of  plant  and  flower,  the  noise 
of  running  waters,  the  music  of  the  sea,  the  rosy  dawn,  the 
starlit  night,  etc. 

Of  the  Eskimo,  Dr  D.  G.  Brinton  writes  (73,  p.  289),  in 
his  study  of  native  American  poetry  :  '  Some  of  their  poetical 
productions  reveal  a  true  and  deep  appreciation  of  the 
marvellous,  the  impressive,  and  the  beautiful  scenes  which 
their  land  and  climate  present.  Prominent  features  in  their 
tales  and  chants  are  the  flashing,  variegated  aurora,  whose 
shooting  streams  they  fable  to  be  the  souls  of  departed 
heroes ;  the  milky  way,  gleaming  in  the  still  Arctic  night, 
which  they  regard  as  the  bridge  by  which  the  souls  of  the 
good  and  brave  mount  to  the  place  of  joy;  the  vast,  glitter- 
ing, soundless  snow-fields ;  and  the  mighty  crashing  glacier, 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE  SAVAGE  329 

splintering  from  his  shoreward  cUffs  the  ice-mountains  which 
float  down  to  the  great  ocean.' 

The  '  Mountain-Chant '  of  the  Navahos  and  the  love- 
poems  of  the  Micmacs  and  other  eastern  Algonkian  Indians 
contain  abundant  evidence  of  sensibility  to,  and  love  of 
Nature,  the  former  recalling  at  times  Dante,  in  its  majesty, 
the  latter  the  love-lyrics  of  our  own  poets.  In  the  creation- 
songs  of  the  Dinkas  of  the  White  Nile  and  the  amatory 
poems  of  the  Hottentots  a  simplicity  that  is  noble  and 
convincing  often  appears.  Everywhere  we  find,  as  Ratzel 
remarks  (523,  I.  p.  49),  that  'even  the  savage,  the  most 
prejudiced  creature  in  human  shape,  the  man  with  the  least 
field  of  vision,  receives  an  impression  from  the  rainbow,  "  the 
bridge  to  the  sky,"  from  the  roar  of  the  sea,  from  the  rustle  of 
the  woods,  the  bubbling  of  the  spring.'  With  these  im- 
pressions primitive  superstition  and  primitive  poetry  work  in 
such  a  way  as  to  make  it  appear  '  a  highly  superfluous  ques- 
tion to  ask  if  these  races  have  a  sense  of  Nature.'  Says 
Dr  Ratzel  further  (523,  I.  p.  70):  'Many  myths  are  nothing 
but  picturesque  descriptions  of  natural  events  and  personi- 
fications of  natural  forces.  These  bridge  over  the  interval  to 
science,  for  in  them  the  mythology  becomes,  like  science,  the 
way  and  the  method  towards  the  knowledge  of  the  causes  of 
phenomena.  The  original  object  falls  into  the  background, 
the  images  become  independent  figures  whose  quarrels  and 
tricks  have  an  interest  of  their  own.  Herewith  we  have  the 
fable,  especially  the  widespread  beast-fable.'  That  some  of 
the  early  Greek  and  Latin  myths  were  of  this  character  has 
been  shown  by  Professor  B.  K.  Emerson  (190,  p.  328),  who 
has  discussed  such  'geological  myths 'as 'the  Chimaera' (the 
poetry  of  petroleum),  '  Niobe '  (the  tragic  side  of  calcareous 
tufa),  '  Lot's  wife '  (the  indirect  religious  effect  of  cliff-erosion), 
'Noah's  flood'  (possibilities  of  the  cyclone  and  earthquake 
wave  working  in  harmony).  The  less  imposing  and  perhaps 
more  quietly  poetic  and  imaginative  side  of  the  nature-love 
of  primitive  peoples  is  to  be  seen  in  the  proverbs,  legends 
and  folk-speech  of  such  Oriental  peoples  as  the  Tamuls  of 
India.  It  is,  therefore,  not  altogether  just  when  Hoffding 
declares  (298,  p.  266)  that,  'from  the  primitive  practical 
standpoint  a  beautiful  country  is  the  same  as  a  fruitful  one, 
fruitful,  that  is,  in  corn  and  grass,'  since  not  a  few  very 
primitive  peoples  are  capable  of,  and  do  often  express,  a  much 


330  TlIK   CHILD 

higher  sense  of  beauty  than  that.  Similarly  unfair  is  the  state- 
ment of  Ribot  (536,  J).  187),  who  ascribes  the  alleged  lack 
of  feeling  for  Nature  in  savages  and  children  to  poverty  of 
mind:  'The  child,  who  has  a  lively  sense  of  the  possession 
or  the  deprivation  of  a  plaything,  remains  insensible  before 
a  great  landscape  by  reason  of  his  intellectual  poverty.  It  is 
a  fact  (notwidistanding  the  common  opinion  to  the  contrary) 
that  a  savage,  or  a  barbarian  even,  is  not  moved  by  the 
splendours  of  civilised  life,  but  only  by  its  mean  {inesquin)  and 
puerile  sides.  Its  grand  aspects  inspire  in  him  neither  desire, 
nor  admiration,  nor  jealousy,  for  he  does  not  comprehend 
them.'  Among  primitive  peoples  we  not  infrequently  find 
individuals  who  enter  into  very  close  touch  with  Nature  and 
with  '  Nature's  God,'  and  who  would  compare  very  favourably 
with  the  like  characters  belonging  to  our  own  race,  or  any 
other  that  has  achieved  or  attempted  civilisation. 

Writing  of  a  Pawnee  Indian  priest,  whose  devotion  to  the 
religion  of  his  fathers  remained  unshaken  amid  the  new 
environment  created  by  the  whites.  Miss  Alice  C.  Hetcher 
says :  ^  *  His  unquestioning  faith  in  the  religion  of  his  fore- 
fathers soared  far  above  the  turbulent  conditions  of  to-day, 
and  gave  to  him  a  calm  akin  to  the  serenity  of  childhood, 
which  was  reflected  in  his  kindly,  smiling,  and  peaceful 
face.' 

Mind-Conient  atid  Knoivkdge. — In  connection  with  the 
numerous  investigations  of  '  the  contents  of  children's  minds,' 
Heydner  justly  remarks  that  such  analyses  are  often  not  more 
than  half  right,  for,  as  is  equally  the  case  with  primitive 
peoples,  'children  can  not  be  expected  to  tell  their  whole  soul 
in  the  second  school-year.'  In  all  probability  they  know  a 
great  deal  more  about  some  one  or  some  few  things  than  they 
are  given  credit  for,  and  think  a  great  deal  more  about  all  of 
them  than  they  are  able  to  convey  to  their  elders  in  intelligible 
form  (295,  p.  50).  Not  all  the  child  learns  and  thinks  in  his 
walks  through  wood  and  mead,  along  river-bank  and  pond- 
margin,  over  hill  and  dale,  through  swamp  and  bog,  in  rainy 
and  in  pleasant  weather,  in  summer  sun  and  winter  snow, 
comes  to  the  surface  when  he  is  questioned  for  scientific  pur- 
poses for  a  brief  time  and  often  under  repressive  or  embarrass- 
ing circumstances.  As  Uttle  does  the  teacher  sometimes  learn 
of  the  children's  real,  deep  ideas  and  imaginings  about  heaven, 

1  A  men  Anthr.,  N.S.,  I.  p.  85. 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  33 1 

horses,  shadows,  the  wind,  railroads,  Christmas,  death,  looking- 
glasses,  moonshine,  snails,  canary-birds,  etc.,  in  the  brief 
period  of  his  inquisitorial  office,  as  the  new-come  traveller  is 
able  to  discover,  in  the  few  days  of  his  residence  among  some 
savage  or  barbarous  tribes,  concerning  their  profoundest 
thoughts  about  man  and  nature.  The  childhood  of  the 
individual  and  the  childhood  of  the  race  are  preeminently 
periods  of  thought ;  concerning  both  we  well  might  use  the 
words  of  the  poet  and  declare  that  even  '  the  body  thought.' 

The  extent  of  the  knowledge  of  savage  and  barbarous 
tribes  concerning  the  animal  and  vegetable  world  of  their  sur- 
roundings can  be  seen  from  the  statement  of  Professor  O.  T. 
Mason  (413,  p.  79),  that  'in  every  one  of  the  eighteen 
environments  [into  which  he  divides  North  and  South 
America]  'mentioned  in  this  paper  the  savage  people  know  the 
best  thing  for  every  purpose  :  the  best  substance  for  clothing, 
the  best  wood  for  the  bow,  for  the  spear,  the  arrow,  etc. ;  and 
it  is  astonishing  to  find  what  a  large  vocabulary  exists  in  each 
one  of  them  for  different  forms  of  animal  life  and  different 
parts  of  the  animal's  body.'  Professor  Mason  goes  so  far, 
indeed,  as  to  declare  that  '  half  the  words  of  any  primitive 
language  are  derived  from  man's  association  with  beast- 
kind.' 

The  Maoris  of  New  Zealand,  according  to  Dr  Hector,^ 
'had  a  much  better  knowledge  of  the  natural  history  of  their 
country  than  any  people  he  had  ever  heard  of.  The  older 
Maoris  had  noticed  and  had  distinct  names  for  nearly  all 
their  plants,  not  merely  those  that  were  of  use ;  and  the  same 
names,  with  slight  modifications,  were  universally  in  use 
throughout  a  country  a  thousand  miles  in  length.  They  had 
generic  names  by  which  they  grouped  plants  according  to 
their  affinities,  in  a  way  impossible  to  most  people  who  were 
not  educated  botanists.' 

The  mythology,  both  of  the  Navahos  (to  specify  but  one 
tribe  of  North  American  Indians)  and  of  the  Maoris,  embodies 
much  of  this  great  knowledge  of  plant  and  animal  environ- 
ment. 

In  his  discussion  of  '  Environmental  Relations  in  Arizona,' 
M.  Walter  Hough  2  gives  the  following  table  to  illustrate  'the 
thorough  way  [there   are  probably  not  over    160  indigenous 

1  Nature,  Vol.  XH.  p.  467.  - 
^  Amcr.  Anthr.,  May  1898, 


TIIK   CHILD 


species  in  the  environmeni]  in  which  the  Hopi  Indians  have 
made  use  of  their  [)lant  surroundings': — 


luiiployineiit  of  Plaiil  and  Tree. 


yeast 


Agriculture  and  forage  (not  cultivatetl) . 

Arts  (dyeing,  decorating,  painting,  cement,  textiles 

etc.)  .         .         '.         .         . 

Architecture  (house-building) 
Domestic    life    (firewood,    brooms,    soap, 

vessels,  etc.)     ..... 

Games  and  amusements 

Dress  and  adornment   .... 

Folk-lore      ...... 

Food  ....... 

Medicine,  folk  and  empirical 

Religion       ...... 


Total 


No.  of  Plants  thus 
enii)loycd. 


13 

17 
4 


6 
10 
47 
45 
19 

173 


Of  the  Micmac  Indians  of  Nova  Scotia,  Dr  Rand  says,  with 
some  exaggeration  (519,  p.  xi.) :  '  They  have  studied  botany 
from  Nature's  volume.  They  know  the  names  of  all  the  trees 
and  shrubs  and  useful  plants  and  roots  in  their  country.  They 
have  studied  their  natures,  habits  and  uses.  They  have  killed, 
dissected  and  examined  all  the  animals  of  North  America, 
from  the  fiesti/ge-pegajii  to  the  guhvakchech  (from  the  buffalo  to 
the  mouse).  They  have  in  like  manner  examined  the  birds 
and  the  fish.' 

The  statement  of  Professor  Freudenthal,  of  Breslau,  there- 
fore, that  'primitive  peoples,  uneducated  Europeans  and 
children  are  able  to  distinguish  but  few  species  of  flowers ' 
(220,  p.  435),  is  an  unjustifiable  generalisation,  in  so  far  as 
'primitive  people'  are  concerned,  as  the  evidence  referred  to 
above  clearly  indicates. 

The  following  table  (all  peoples  do  not  count  the  same 
number  of  months;  some  of  the  lists  are  incomplete;  and  many 
months  have  more  than  one  name)  will  serve  to  demonstrate 
how  the  observations  of  the  savage  and  barbarous  races  of  men 
have  been  recorded  in  the  names  they  have  given  to  the  various 
months,  or  divisions  of  the  year,  and  at  the  same  time  to  show 
the  great  influence  of  environment  in  determining  them  : — - 


•udciq^-ng 

i        ;       n         :           ^              u-i      r/^            : 

•Eduiq3 

:     :    "    "       L'^        ^     ;        ; 

•?iP!nO 

:       f^       :        :           ^               '^'^        :           •-' 

•[snbiiiDjj'B^ 

:       c'l        :       fi           "                '■'^        :           '-' 

■F1U3ZX 

:         :         :       "           ""^               ^         :             • 

•B.ici\[ 

►1         M            .         HH                 :                    VO         >-l               CN 

•BJO^ICQ 

^       CO       fO         ;             C^                 IT)         ^               ; 

•Egcpuouo 

f        :        :        :          -'              <^       :            • 

•9dEU3']; 

ro         •        ►-        ii             IT)                  u-i       w                : 

•trA\c|irQ 

1 

•33J3 

"      VO        j      w            :              tt      «            : 

•JOOJ^lOEia 

•Xnuajoo^ 

N        11        w         j            to                ro        j            « 

•dcAvqsnqg 

"        :      N        :           ^              N      N            1 

•UI>JS3a-BJJ  3UpQ 

VO        M        w          1               1                 VO          •               • 

•(i3ure3)  9U9CI 

1        :      lo       :            :              "^       \           \ 

•T-'piUH 

(S        r'l       C)          j             ro                 N          :               : 

S2 

1 
Animals 

Birds      . 

Fish       . 

Reptiles,  insects     . 

Plants,      fruits 
(planting,  harvest) 

Weather  (sun,  sky, 
cold,    heat,    light, 
etc.)     . 

Human  activities    . 

Religion,   festivals, 
etc. 

334  THE  CHILD 

The  detail  of  some  of  these  observations  may  be  judged 
from  the  fact  that  the  Ojibwa  have  named  three  successive 
montlis  from  the  growth  of  berries ;  the  Crees  four  UKjnths  in 
succession  (May- August)  from  the  laying  of  eggs  by  birds,  the 
little  ones  leaving  the  shell,  the  moulting  of  birds,  and  the 
fledglings  taking  to  llight;  the  Carrier  Dene  four  successive 
months  (July-October)  from  the  ai)pearance  of  the  land-locked 
salmon,  the  red  salmon,  the  little  trout,  and  the  whitefish. 
Moreover,  the  Hareskin  Den^  have,  besides  their  months,  a 
division  of  the  year  into  sixteen  'seasons,'  all  of  which  are 
named  after  the  conditions  of  day  and  night,  heat  and  cold, 
rain  and  snow,  the  condition  of  the  ground  and  the  water. 
A  similar  table  to  that  given  above  might  be  made  for  the 
names  of  the  seasons,  the  cardinal  points,  etc. 

That  the  Indians  as  a  class  are  'incomparably  superior  to 
the  average  white  man,  or  to  the  white  man  who  has  not  made 
zoology  or  botany  a  subject  of  study,'  is  the  opinion  of  Dr 
Washington  Matthews,^  based  on  his  own  experience  in  the 
field.  '  There  is  a  prevalent  impression,'  says  Dr  Matthews, 
'  that  Indians  are  unable  to  generalise ;  and  a  paragraph  goes 
the  round  of  the  ethnological  treatises  to  the  effect  that  the 
Chatas  [Choctaws]  have  no  general  term  for  oak-tree,  but  only 
specific  names  for  the  white  oak,  the  black  oak,  the  red  oak, 
etc.  This  impression  is  entirely  erroneous.  The  Indian  is  as 
good  a  generaliser  and  classifier  as  his  Caucasian  brother. 
His  system  of  classification  does  not  fully  coincide  with  that 
of  the  white  naturalist,  because  his  system  of  philosophy  leads 
him  to  base  his  groups  upon  a  different  series  of  resemblances, 
but  his  arrangement  is  nevertheless  the  result  of  a  process  of 
generalisation.'  Dependence  upon  the  vegetable  and  animal 
world  for  food  necessarily  gave  the  Indian  extended  know- 
ledge, made  him  an  acute  observer,  and  stimulated  his  faculties 
of  interpretation  and  explanation. 

Abstraction. — Very  minute  knowledge,  and  the  multiplicity 
of  very  special  forms  of  observation,  may  sometimes  lead  to  an 
impossibility  of  abstraction.  The  system  which  the  natives  of 
Madagascar,  as  Bastian  tells  us,  employ  to  distinguish  (with  a 
different  word  for  each)  the  twenty  aspects  of  the  growth  of 
the  horns  of  oxen,  may  be  more  perfect  than  their  numeral 
system,  since  they  feel  in  the  form  a  more  vivid  interest,  and 
it  appeals  to  them  more  concretely.  Not  alone  do  savage 
1  Bull,  rhilos.  Soc,  Wash.,  VII.  p.  74. 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  33$ 

races  differ  very  widely  in  their  powers  of  specialisation  (sub- 
ject to  the  influence  of  viilieii,  social  status,  etc.),  but  in  the 
inferences  they  are  capable  of  drawing  from  any  given  exhibi- 
tion or  object  presented,  and  children  differ  as  widely  in  both 
ways.  When  von  den  Steinen  showed  a  Bakairi  Indian  a 
looking-glass,  the  latter  'nodded  calmly  and  said,  "Water,"' 
and  when  other  natives  wished  a  sight  of  the  mirror  they  said : 
'Show  us  the  "water"!'  Mr  B.  D.  Howard,  on  the  other 
hand,  who  showed  a  hand-mirror  to  the  Ainu  of  the  island  of 
Saghalien,  reports  that  '  This,  to  my  astonishment,  quickly 
produced  exactly  the  effect  my  rifle  failed  to  accomplish.  As 
fast  as  I  showed  them  their  faces,  they  darted  like  arrows  to 
the  doorway,  and  nothing  could  induce  them  to  come  back.'  ^ 
The  difference  between  the  actions  of  the  two  savages  is  easily 
understood;  the  Bakairi  had  called  up  in  his  mind  by  the 
sight  of  the  mirror  the  water  of  the  river,  in  which  possibly  he 
had  often  seen  his  own  face  reflected,  and  was  in  no  way  dis- 
turbed by  the  new  object,  while  the  Ainu  thought  he  saw  his 
own  ghost  or  spirit,  and  was  inexpressibly  excited  and  filled 
with  apprehension.  It  is  evidently  quite  often  not  the  fact  of 
being  a  savage,  but  the  range  of  possible  associations,  that 
determines  the  reaction  at  the  sight  of  a  mirror,  a  fact  which 
applies  to  children  no  less  than  to  primitive  peoples. 

When  the  Hottentots,  who  already  possessed  the  word 
nadi,  '  mirror,'  saw  the  Europeans  read  for  the  first  time,  they 
called  a  book  ^/ad/,  adding  to  it  for  purposes  of  clearness, 
ofheeta,  '  for  speaking ' — a  book  was  to  them  a  '  speech-mirror.' 
On  account  of  this  new  term  the  real  mirror  came  to  be  desig- 
nated nadi  ok'haitgeela,  or  'look-mirror.'  This  'mirror  of 
speech,'  Spiegel  der  Rede,  is  adopted  by  Erdmann^  as  a  term 
worthy  the  consideration  of  modern  linguistic  psychology. 

That  abstraction  is  more  common  both  among  the  lower 
races  of  men  and  with  children  than  is  usually  believed  seems 
certain,  the  progress  from  the  concrete  to  the  abstract  revealing 
itself  in  the  development  of  language,  art,  religion,  ethics, 
social  institutions,  etc.  Preyer's  child's  '  new  papa '  for  '  uncle,' 
and  the  eleven-month-old  boy's  '  wawa '  for  '  dog,  butterfly, 
trees,  moving  in  the  wind,  thunder,  etc.,'  indicate  some  of  the 
lines  of  thought  traversed.  Maennel  fixes  upon  the  sixth  or  the 
seventh  year  as  the  period  in  which  '  first  appear  those  abstrac- 

'^  Join:  Anier.  Folk-Lore,  VH.  p.  95. 
^Arch.f.  syst.  Phihs.,  N.F.  HI.  32. 


336  THE  CHILD 

tions  which  are  cuinparablc  to  general  ideas.'  There  are  great 
dirierences  individually  in  children  in  their  logical  processes, 
and  many  grown-up  peo[)le  never  reach  anything  like  logical 
perfection;  the  so-called  'ap[)ercei)tion  stages'  (Ziller  and 
Rein  make  8,  Vogt  3,  Hartmann  6,  Lange  24)  are  difficult  of 
delimitation  and  interpretation,  if,  indeed,  they  exist  at  all  in 
the  fashion  described  by  most  writers  of  this  school.  In  child- 
hood (as  with  savages  generally)  the  first  years  of  life  (those 
passed  before  school-life  re-orients  the  child)  are  characterised, 
as  Lange  observes,  by  'abstractions  shaped  by  alternating 
sensual  interests,'  and  a  'harmless  wa/z'^'/t',' which,  later  on,  is 
replaced  by  the  critical  attitude.  The  child's  first  *  good  '  is 
what  is  accompanied  by  pleasant  consequences,  and  the 
sudden  introduction  of  religious  ideas  at  this  period  often  does 
incalculable  harm. 

'  Only  with  the  possession  of  language,'  says  Maennel,  in 
his  interesting  study  of  'Abstraction'  (390,  p.  37),  'does 
Nature  lose  her  unity  and  break  up  into  a  multitude  of  centres, 
of  beings,  that  are  named,  and,  by  names,  furnished  with  indi- 
vidualities. Then,  too,  for  the  first  time,  abstraction — the 
simplest  form,  at  least — becomes  possible.  Still  individuals 
cannot  yet  be  conceived  as  altogether  sharply  delimited.  For 
sleep-life  and  waking  life  continue  so  to  run  over  into  each 
other,  that  the  indeterminate  forms  of  dreaming  are  still 
interpreted  as  real.'  The  child  and  the  savage  meet  on  this 
ground,  some  young  boys  and  girls  being  as  iirmly  imi)ressed 
with  the  reality  of  their  dreams  as  are  the  Brazilian  Indians  of 
whom  von  den  Steinen  w'rites.  The  influence  of  this  divided 
allegiance  of  primitive  man  to  sleep  and  waking  upon  the 
development  of  speech  has  yet  to  be  studied.  Evidently  there 
are  other  '  ghost-words '  than  those  pilloried  by  Skeat,  the 
lexicographer.  Maennel  notes  what  he  aptly  terms  'the  need- 
less abstraction  of  primitive  peoples' ;  only  something  striking 
seems  to  be  needed  to  lead  to  the  formation  of  strange  associ- 
ations bringing  out  ideas  not  longer  possessed  by  civilised 
man.  While  we  recognise  the  materially-minded  character  of 
savage  and  barbarous  man  (in  which  our  children  so  often 
resemble  him),  we  must  not  forget  that  'primitive  peoples  far 
exceed  our  children,  nay,  even  the  adults  of  our  civilised  races, 
in  the  extraordinary  keenness  of  their  sense-perceptions,  their 
wonderful  attention,  and  their  remarkable  memory.' 

Mivart,  who  holds  to  the  theory  of  '  a  difference  in  kind 


THE    CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  337 

between  human  reason  and  the  cognitive  faculties  of  brutes,' 
observes,  with  considerable  truth  :  '  As  folly  or  prejudice  makes 
tales  of  animal  intelligence  so  often  quite  untrustworthy,  so 
also  the  statements  as  to  the  mental  defects  of  savages  are 
hardly  less  so'  (429,  p.  205).  Thus  many  examples  of  'what 
have  been  deemed  forms  of  predication  so  low  as  to  border  on 
mere  sensuous  and  animal  language  '  turn  out,  when  carefully 
examined,  as  logical  and  as  intellectual  as  expressions  in  daily 
use  among  users  of  the  most  highly  developed  languages  of  the 
civilised  world.  Even  to-day  the  Englishman  or  American 
can  and  does  use  such  an  expression  as,  e.g.^  '  my  work,'  in 
such  fashion,  aided  by  emphasis,  context  and  gesture,  that  it 
in  no  wise  differs  from  the  very  primitive  ;?/  ne  of  the  Grebo, 
an  African  language  said  to  mean  either  '  I  do  it,'  or  '  you  do 
not.'  So  it  is,  when  we  come  to  the  statement  that  many 
primitive  languages  lack  general  terms  while  they  have  a  ple- 
thora of  particular  names.  Our  possession  of  these  general 
terms  may  be,  in  many  ways,  and  on  diverse  occasions,  an 
economy  of  speech,  yet  there  is  something  in  what  Mivart 
says  (429,  p.  205) :  '  It  has,  for  example,  been  objected  against 
the  intellectual  ability  of  the  Society  Islanders  that  they  have 
separate  words  for  "  dog's  tail,"  "  bird's  tail,"  "  sheep's  tail," 
etc.,  but  no  word  for  "tail"  itself — i.e.,  "tail  in  general." 
But  really  the  experience  of  the  use  of  that  word  by  ourselves 
leads  us  to  consider  the  condition  of  these  islanders  in  this 
respect  to  be  no  great  misfortune.  We  have  our  word  "  tail  " 
— tail  in  general — and  it  is  constantly  made  use  of  in  a  way 
which  is  hopelessly  misleading.  To  use  the  same  term,  as  we 
do,  for  what  we  call  the  "  tails  "  of  a  peacock,  a  monkey,  and 
a  lobster  is,  so  far,  to  be  in  a  worse  plight  than  that  asserted  of 
the  Society  Islanders.'  The  savage  is,  in  a  sense,  ultra- 
scientific,  if  not  economical  of  names. 

Conservatism  and  Misoneism.— The  instinct  of  preservation 
in  children  has  been  discussed  by  Paola  Lombroso.  Children 
have  '  an  instinctive  sense  of  preservation,  as  if  they  felt  the 
fragility  of  their  existence  and  clung  to  it  with  all  their  strength.' 
This  is  true  physiologically  and  psychologically.  Little 
children  even  have  a  lack  of  sensibility  for  pains,  bruises, 
wounds,  etc.,  that  is  often  surprising,  and  their  disregard  of 
the  consequences  of  a  blow  or  a  fall  is,  when  they  have  not 
been  pampered  by  too  careful  parents  or  nurses,  at  times  most 
wonderful.     Not  localising  pain  very  readily  until  two  or  three 


338  THE    CHILD 

years  of  age,  they  seem  to  resemble  the  savages  in  their 
resistance  to  physical  pain  and  their  desperate  clinging  to 
life  (370).  All  their  psychic  life  is  controlled  by  the  feeling  of 
self-preservation,  the  least  expenditure  of  energy — the  law  of 
least  effort  really  dominating  everything.  Their  speech  is  of 
the  sort  that  costs  the  least  exercise  of  intelligence — gestures, 
cries,  pointing  of  the  finger,  and  after  these  onomatopoeic  and 
imitative  language.  The  bizarre  associations  of  ideas  in  little 
children  are  often  due,  'not  to  a  power  of  generalisation,  but 
rather  to  a  repugnance  to  the  effort  of  using  new  terms.' 
From  economy  of  effort  in  conceptions  it  results  also  that  all 
the  child's  ideas  and  images  are  concrete,  it  being  much  easier 
to  seize  the  concrete  than  the  abstract.  Hence,  also,  he 
wishes  questions  to  be  'clear,  plain,  without  gaps,  and  well 
delimited ' ;  he  has  a  natural  dislike  for  the  vague,  the  in- 
definite, and  takes  long  to  acquaint  himself  with  ideas  of 
immortality,  infinite  space,  etc.  He  is  misoneistic  and  hates 
to  have  the  old  ways  and  old  things  changed  or  altered  in  any 
degree.  He  wants  to  hear  the  same  story  in  the  same  words 
from  the  same  person,  and  is  exceedingly  jealous  of  even  the 
slightest  alteration  in  his  favourite  tale.  This  misoneism  serves 
as  a  means  of  orientation  and  equilibration  for  the  child,  'pre- 
venting him  from  wasting  his  strength  in  too  many  new 
experiences.'  He  develops  '  a  faculty  for  exploiting  the 
pleasure  to  be  had  in  life  and  avoiding  much  of  its  pain,'  and 
would  be  loved  rather  than  love,  affection  being  often  nothing 
more  than  a  mimic  extravagance,  mere  exuberance  of  joy. 
When  thoroughly  abandoned  to  his  instincts,  '  the  child  is  a 
little  savage,  passionate,  deceitful,  megalomaniac,  boastful, 
etc.,'  but  everywhere  one  finds  evidence  of  the  domination  of 
this  momentous  instinct  of  preservation  and  conservatism. 

Latiguage  Changes. — Useful  for  comparison  with  Miss 
Lombroso's  study  of  the  child  is  Mr  Edmund  Noble's  essay  on 
'  The  Principle  of  Economy  in  Evolution '  (459),  in  which 
similar  phenomena,  as  they  present  themselves  in  the  history 
of  the  race,  are  discussed.  Onomatopoeic  names  of  animals, 
natural  phenomena,  implements,  etc.,  animal  and  human 
noises  and  actions,  illustrate  the  principle  of  economy  in  the 
expenditure  of  mental  energy  and  intelligence  in  the  child, 
while,  in  the  adult,  and  in  the  evolution  of  the  race,  the 
departure  from  these  principles  of  naming,  the  creation  or 
adoption   of    all-inclusive,    general   terms,    the    emergence   of 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  339 

generic  terms  in  place  of  very  special  appellations,  in  other 
words,  the  economy  of  description  made  possible  by  the 
human  intellect,  which  instead  of  describing  a  single  quality  of 
the  object  named,  evolves  or  creates  a  word  which  calls  up  the 
image  in  its  entirety,  illustrate  the  workings  of  the  human  mind 
towards  the  same  end,  the  production  of  a  name-word  with  the 
least  possible  expenditure  of  mental  effort. 

It  is  a  great  achievement  in  mental  economy  for  the  child 
to  name  the  dog  '  bow-wow,'  or  to  signify  its  desire  for  water 
by  making  a  gurgling  sound,  but  even  greater  is  the  economy 
which  the  best  educated  speaker  of  the  English  language 
illustrates  in  his  use  of  the  words  'dog'  and  'water.'  This 
gain  in  generality  of  expression  has  of  necessity  entailed  a  great 
loss  of  Sprachgefiihl  (the  sense  of  the  etymological  significance 
of  names)  and  of  the  utilisation  of  analogy  as  a  factor  in  name- 
giving.  The  *  mouse'  is  no  longer  thought  of  as  '  the  stealer' 
(white  mice  are  now  guests  and  pets) ;  the  '  duck  '  is  no  longer 
perceived  only  as  the  'waddler'  ('duck'  has  even  become  a 
term  of  endearment) ;  '  woman '  is  no  more  known  only  as 
'  the  bearer  '  (the  '  maiden  lady  '  and  the  '  new  woman '  have 
asserted  themselves  as  a  power  in  the  land) ;  the  '  ant '  is 
no  longer  merely  'the  swarmer'  (upon  the  nineteenth  century 
it  is  his  industry  makes  the  greatest  impression) ;  the  '  father  ' 
is  no  longer  simply  the  'nourisher' (modern  politics  abund- 
antly exhibit  our  '  city  fathers '  as  '  bleeders  '  rather  than  as 
supporters  and  preservers);  the  'star'  is  no  more  merely  'the 
strewer '  (for  the  path  of  the  theatrical  '  star '  of  to-day  is  more 
often  '  strewn '  by  the  populace) ;  a  '  picture '  is  now  far 
from  being  a  mere  'scratching'  (though  it  may  be  an  'etching') 
etc.  Had  we  today  to  name  all  the  things  we  know  by  a 
single  quality  which  we  perceive  them  to  possess,  to  the 
exclusion  of  all  others,  our  language  would  be  metamorphosed 
in  strange  and  curious  fashion,  and  would,  by  very  reason  of 
our  advance  in  knowledge  and  perception  of  milieii  and 
environment,  be  in  no  way  a  return  to  the  terms  of  our  Anglo- 
Saxon  forefathers,  or  the  limited  horizons  of  early  childhood. 

Farther  from  the  child,  in  some  respects,  and  yet,  as  many 
of  the  words  of  his  secret  languages  prove,  nearer  to  him  than- 
to  the  savages,  are  we  of  to-day,  with  our  word-sentences 
('  Mind  ! '  '  Beware  ! '  Thanks  ! '  etc.),  with  the  twists  we  give 
our  slang  expression  ('Oh,  I  don't  know!'  'Come  off  your 
perch  ! ')  and  the  contraction  and  syncopation  we  have  visited 


340  THE   CHILD 

upon  the  grammatical  forms  of  our  language  (dropping  of  in- 
Hections,  simplification  of  verb  form,  abandonment  of  the 
subjunctive  mood,  use  of  auxiliary  verbs,  etc.).  The  gain 
which  we  have  made  in  mental  economy,  as  well  as  the 
difference  between  some  forms  of  speech  among  primitive 
peoples  and  the  language  of  the  child  is  well  illustrated  by  the 
following  sentence  which  Mr  Noble  cites  (459,  p.  336)  from 
Dr  Bleek's  specimens  of  the  Zulu  tongue  :  U-bu-kosi  b-eiu  o-bii- 
kulu  bu-ya-bona  kala  si-bu-tanda.  The  sentence  means  *  Our 
great  kingdom  appears  ;  we  love  it,'  but  a  literal  translation 
into  English  would  run  thus  :  '  The  king^i^w,  our  dom,  which 
dom  is  the  great  dom,  the  dom  appears,  we  love  the  do77i.'' 
Another  example  which  shows  how  far  we  have  left  behind  the 
complexities  of  savage  speech,  or,  as  some  say,  certain  primitive 
peoples  have  departed  from  an  original  simplicity,  is  given  by 
Major  J.  W.  Powell  in  the  course  of  his  brief  essay  on  the 
'Evolution  of  Language'  (506).  A  Ponka  Indian  in  saying  'a 
man  killed  a  rabbit' really  discourses  thus:  'The  man,  he, 
one,  animate,  standing  [in  the  nominative  case],  purposely 
killed,  by  shooting  an  arrow,  the,  rabbit,  he,  the,  one,  animate, 
sitting '  [in  the  objective  case]. 

Another  detail  in  process  of  disappearance  is  the  subjunc- 
tive mood,  last  relic  of  the  vast  labyrinth  of  verbal  forms  of 
mood,  produced  by  alteration  of  the  verb-stem  itself.  A  recent 
investigation  reveals  the  fact  that  among  some  900,000  words, 
used  by  nine  eminent  writers  of  to-day  (Hardy,  James,  Dowden, 
Lang,  Lecky,  Meredith,  Trail,  Morley,  Stevenson),  the  sub- 
junctive of  any  other  verb  but  be  occurs  only  fifteen  times.  A 
like  tendency,  although  by  no  means  so  strongly,  characterises 
most  of  the  Romance  languages,  as  Mr  H.  L.  Thomas^ 
has  pointed  out,  and  was  even  noticeable  in  some  of  the 
Latin  writers  of  the  Augustan  era,  to  say  nothing  of  Plautus 
and  Terence.  Both  in  Latin  and  in  Romance  texts  the 
editors  have  made  the  old  writers  not  infrequently  conform 
to  usage,  practically  obsolete  in  their  own  day.  The  Romance 
tongues  have  a  vast  accumulation  of  such  impcdinioifa  still, 
for^  as  Herrainz  remarks  (294,  p.  239),  Spanish  'has  850 
irregular  verbs,  with  15,540  anomalous  forms  or  words.' 

Idea  of  Time;  the  Present. — 'The  idea  of  Time,' 
says  Hoffding  (298,  p.  184),  'is  hardly  to  be  traced 
in  children  before  the  third  year,'  and  Guyau  observes 
^  Trans.  Aiithr.  Soc,  Wash.,  I.  p.  29. 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  34I 

(259a,  p.  147),  'the  child  distinguishes  clearly  neither 
times,  nor  places,  nor  persons,' and,  like  the  animal,  'has  not 
really  a  past.'  Erasmus  Darwin ^  had  already  said  'the  ideas 
of  brutes,  like  those  of  children,  are  almost  perpetually  pro- 
duced by  their  present  pleasures,  or  their  present  pains,'  and 
Mme.  Necker  (455,  I.  p.  194)  had  noted  the  'peculiarity  of  the 
child's  imagination,'  that  it  is  '  occupied  only  with  the  present 
time.'  Even  the  '  once  upon  a  time '  in  older  children  is 
made  present  and  the  child  feels  the  story  as  '  now.'  The 
absence  of  tense-signs  in  many  primitive  languages  may  be 
compared  with  the  verbs  that  serve  for  all  tenses  in  the  early 
development  of  child-speech.  As  Brinton  (73,  p.  404)  says: 
'  Equally  foreign  to  primitive  speech  was  any  expression  of 
thne  in  connection  with  verbal  forms;  in  other  words,  there 
was  no  such  thing  as  tenses.'  Thoreau  tells  us  (638,  p.  no) : 
'I  Uved  like  the  Puri  Indians,  of  whom  it  is  said  that  'for 
yesterday,  to-day,  and  to-morrow  they  have  only  one  word,  and 
they  express  the  variety  of  meaning  by  pointing  backward  for 
yesterday,  forward  for  to-morrow,  and  overhead  for  the  passing 
day.'  There  is  some  exaggeration  here,  however,  for,  as 
Ribot  observes  (536,  p.  259):  'The  human  race  has  acquired 
very  quickly  prevision  and  care  for  the  morrow,  even  without 
passing  out  of  [the  stage  of]  savage  life,  hunting  and  fishing.' 
Besides  '  the  instinct  of  accumulation  and  preservation  mani- 
fests itself  in  all  its  simplicity  with  the  majority  of  animals  and 
the  most  savage  peoples,  who  live  strictly  from  hand  to  mouth.' 
Memory. — The  forgetfulness  and  short  memory  of  primitive 
man  and  of  the  child  have  been  cited  by  more  than  one  writer 
as  affording  a  notable  parallelism.  Upon  this  point  Steinmetz 
remarks  :  '  I  believe  that,  generally,  the  memory  of  savage  man 
is  very  short,  but  with  considerable  range  of  variation.  It  is 
more  often  termed  short  by  observers  when  personal  incidents 
and  historical  events  are  concerned,  but,  on  the  other  hand, 
we  cannot  forget  primitive  man's  surprising  knowledge  of  the 
plants  and  animals  which  interest  him,  their  qualities  and 
habits — a  faculty  so  often  and  so  highly  praised — as  well  as  his 
astonishing  knowledge  of  place,  his  wonderfully  good  memory 
for  details  of  paths  and  localities,  drinking-places  and  feeding 
grounds  of  animals,  all  of  which  have  been  emphasised  again 
and  again.  We  must  conclude,  therefore,  that  the  memory  of 
primitive  man  is  not  at  all  short  for  all  those  things  necessary 
^  Zconouiia,  Vol.  I.  p.  265. 


342  THE   CHILD 

to  him,  or  with  which  he  daily  comes  into  contact  in  the 
struggle  for  existence,  for  all  things,  which,  for  any  reason, 
arouse  his  interest'  (613, 1,  p.  313).  Special  and  particular  cir- 
cumstances exercise  and  lengthen  the  memory  of  primitive  man 
to  a  considerable  extent. 

Mr  G.  R.  Stetson,  who  investigated  the  memory  ability  of 
500  white  (average  age  1 1  years)  and  500  black  (average  age  1 2.57 
years)  children  in  the  public  schools  of  ^Vashington,  D.C. — the 
test  was  the  repetition  of  a  brief  poem  after  reciting  it  (verse 
by  verse)  in  concert  twice — found  that  the  negro  children 
had  18  per  cent,  better  memory-retention.  And  while  there 
seemed  to  exist  a  general  correspondence  between  memory 
averages  and  scholarship,  the  memory-rank  of  the  negro  chil- 
dren was  higher  than  their  study-rank  more  conspicuously  than 
was  the  case  with  the  white  children,  although  the  negro 
children  generally  were  inferior  with  regard  to  intellect. 
l)r  F.  W.  (Jolegrove,  in  his  study  of  '  Individual  Memories,' 
has  some  interesting  details  as  to  the  difference  between  the 
memory-recollection  of  whites,  negroes  and  Indians,  the  roles 
of  racial  experience  and  environment  being  very  noticeable. 
One  very  curious  fact  is  thus  recorded  :  '  One  could  hardly 
find  an  Indian  or  white  child  afraid  of  a  candy  sheep's  head 
because  the  teeth  showed,  but  this  was  the  earliest  memory  of 
a  negress  '  (117,  p.  240). 

Historic  Sense. — The  historic  sense  among  children  and 
primitive  peoples  has  been  studied  by  Mrs  Mary  S.  Barnes 
from  the  data  of  ethnology,  and  the  examination,  by  the  story- 
method,  of  some  1250  Californian  school  children,  between  the 
ages  of  eight  and  sixteen.  These  children  were  given  *  a  story 
without  a  date,  a  place,  a  name,  or  a  moral,'  and  the  questions 
spontaneously  asked  by  them  were  taken  as  evidence  of  '  the 
comparative  curiosity  of  children  as  to  personalities,  time, 
cause  and  effect,  and  truth.'  The  chief  results  of  Mrs  Barnes's 
investigations  (36,  p.  89)  may  be  thus  summarised  :  i.  With 
children  (from  seven  years  of  age  onward)  all  the  elements  of 
history  (time,  cause  and  effect,  social,  unit,  truthful  record)  lie 
within  the  field  of  their  curiosity,  and  the  origin-questions  ('  Who 
made  us?'  'Where  did  we  come  from?'  etc.)  are  very  early  in 
their  appearance.  So  '  among  savages  they  appear  altogether 
in  the  rudimentary  forms  of  the  myths  of  origin,  which,  un- 
placed in  space,  vaguely  placed  in  time,  attempt  to  give  some 
true  account  of  the  beginnings  of  man  and  of  the  world ' ;  and. 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  343 

moreover,  they  '  progress  together,  none  of  them  missing,  now 
this  one,  now  that  one  leading.'  2.  The  sense  of  time,  with 
savages,  '  based  upon  the  power  to  count,  and  the  power  to 
record  that  count  concretely,  either  with  the  fingers,  the 
notched  stick,  or  the  knotted  cord,  develops  along  with  the 
development  of  the  inventions  for  keeping  count;  in  other 
words,  this  sense  requires  much  objective  assistance.'  In 
cliildren  'this  sense  is  slight,'  and  'time  is  badly  understood 
until  the  age  of  twelve  or  thirteen  '■ — facts  which  seem  to  justify 
the  conclusion  that  '  the  child  should  be  assisted,  as  the  savage 
was,  by  some  concrete  symbol  or  invention  [chart  or  net  of 
centuries],  by  which  he  can  keep  his  counts  in  sight,  and 
reckon  time  visibly,'  as  he  does  space  on  a  map.  3.  Both  with 
savages  and  children  'the  notion  of  cause  and  effect,  or,  to 
put  it  differently,  the  power  to  infer,  is  present  from  the  begin- 
ning, but  with  primitive  people  it  is  unconscious,  and  with 
children  the  power  does  not  at  all  become  critical  before  the 
age  of  twelve  or  thirteen,  seeming  then  to  receive  a  positive 
impulse,  becoming  stronger  as  well  as  more  exact ' — facts  which 
permit  us  to  conclude  that  '  children  should  not  be  especially 
trained  or  urged  in  inference  until  the  ages  of  twelve  or  thirteen, 
and  that  then  we  may  reasonably  encourage  them  to  draw  in- 
dependent and  correct  conclusions  from  given  premises.'  4. 
With  both  primitive  peoples  and  children  'the  sense  of  the 
social  unit  concentrates  itself  about  ancestors,  heroes,  kings, 
developing  into  a  sense  of  wider  personality,  as  their  history, 
that  is,  their  experience,  widens,'  but  with  the  latter  the  '  larger 
interest '  cannot  be  said  to  develop  before  the  ages  of  eleven 
or  twelve.  Here  the  conclusion  is  that  '  history  should  first 
interest  itself  with  the  biographies  of  heroic  and  striking  char- 
acters who  are  connected  with  the  previous  knowledge  or  life 
of  the  child  [with  the  myths  he  already  knows,  with  the 
country]  and  always  with  that  life  of  action  [fighting,  hunting, 
building]  which  belongs  to  children  and  primitive  people  alike.' 
For  children  this  sort  of  '  instruction  may  take  the  place  of  war 
and  trade  in  widening  their  narrow  world.'  5.  Savages  have  a 
'quite  positive  sense  of  a  truthful  record,'  seek  'to  preserve  the 
original  record  or  relic  by  every  means  in  their  power,'  although 
'it  does  not  occur  to  them  to  substantiate  that  truth  by  any 
searching  criticism  of  evidence,'  while  children  'are  very 
anxious  to  know  whether  a  record  or  story  is  true  or  not,  and 
show  interest  in  an  original  record  or  relic,'  although  they  seem 


344  Tiiii  CHILI) 

to  be  'largely  contented  with  being  told  that  it  is  true  by  a 
person  in  whom  tliey  have  faith,  not  showing  a  tendency  to 
in(iuire  critically  into  the  matter  until  the  ages  of  twelve  or 
lliirteen.'  Here  we  may  argue  in  favour  of  'connecting  history 
from  the  beginning  witli  original  records,  scenes  and  objects,' 
by  which  means  the  children  will  be  afforded  '  tliat  material  tie 
with  the  past  which  they  desire  as  much  as  the  savages.'  6. 
With  the  race  'critical  history  develops  last,  being  preceded 
by  beautiful  history,  moral  history,  and  mnemonic  history,  all 
these  forms  running  along  contemporaneously,'  while  with 
children  '  history  finds  natural  expression  in  stories,  pictures, 
dramatic  plays  and  poems,  with  or  without  a  moral.'  The 
conclusion  here  is  that  'we  should  seek  our  history  for  children 
in  Plutarch,  Homer  and  Shakespeare,  before  seeking  it  in 
edited  documents  with  notes  and  criticisms  of  the  modern 
school  of  history,'  and  we  must  let  the  scientific  forms  of 
history  '  wait  on  the  development  of  material,  and  also  on  the 
development  of  the  critical  sense;  that  is,  until  the  ages  of 
twelve  and  above.'  The  prominence  of  lists  and  genealogies 
in  primitive  history  seems  to  justify  to  some  extent  '  some  form 
of  chart  or  list  or  century  calendar  which  can  constantly  be 
used,  as  a  map  would  be,  for  matters  of  time,'  while  'the  wide 
employment  of  aesthetic  and  didactic  forms  of  history  indicates 
that  they  should  form  a  large  element  in  the  early  presentation 
of  our  subject.'  7.  Among  primitive  peoples  'the  instant 
widening  of  interest  and  curiosity,  when  brought  into  contact 
with  new  objects  and  people,'  and  with  children  '  the  instant 
awakening  of  interest  at  the  sight  of  a  strange  relic  or  picture ' 
are  facts  which  serve  to  '  indicate  that  we  may  widen  the  field 
of  history  as  fast  as  new  experience  or  knowledge  can  widen  it.' 
8.  The  sex-difference  among  children — boys  appear  more 
curious  in  regard  to  ivho,  ivhere,  hoiv,  girls  as  to  why ;  boys  are 
superior  in  inference ;  time,  truth  and  general  detail  seem  to 
show  no  sex-difference — '  are  not  pronounced  enough  to  warrant 
a  separation  of  boys  and  girls,'  while  the  probability  is  that  'no 
artificial  method  of  stimulating  these  powers  will  equal  the 
natural  rivalries  of  the  school-room  and  the  sexes.' 

Curiosity. — 'A  curious  child'  is  a  familiar  figure  with  the 
poets,  and  Guyau  rightfully  says :  '  The  child  is  naturally 
curious,' repeating  what  Fenelon  had  already  written  in  1678, 
'  the  curiosity  of  children  is  a  natural  penchant  that  precedes 
instruction,'  and  what  Plutarch  had  written  before  Fenelon : 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  345 

'Children  are  much  in  love  with  riddles  and  such  fooleries  as 
are  difficult  and  intricate ;  for  whatever  is  curious  and  subtle 
doth  attract  and  allure  human  nature  as  antecedently  to  all 
instruction  agreeable  and  proper  to  it.'  ^ 

Says  Ribot  (536,  p.  60) :  '  'I'his  primitive  necessity — the 
need  to  know — is,  in  its  instinctive  form,  curiosity.  It  has  all 
degrees,  from  the  animal  that  feels  and  scents  to  a  Goethe  who 
searches  everything,  wishes  to  know,  to  embrace  everything ;  from 
puerile  investigation  to  the  highest ;  but  whatever  differences 
there  may  be  in  its  object,  in  point  of  application,  in  its  in- 
tensity, it  always  remains  identical  with  itself.  He  who  is 
without  it,  as  the  idiot,  is  a  eunuch  in  the  intellectual  order.' 
In  all  probability,  the  child  is  more  given  to  curiosity  than 
primitive  man ;  there  is  some  truth  in  Spencer's  dictum  that 
the  savage  has  little  taste  for  novelty. 

Story-telling. — Between  the  story-telling  of  the  child  and 
that  of  primitive  man  resemblances  might  justly  be  expected, 
although  many  of  the  tales  and  legends  of  even  the  lowest 
races  of  men  possess  so  many  peculiarities  due  to  adult  ex- 
perience that  the  comparison  cannot  always  be  made  upon 
similar  terms.  Moreover,  the  alleged  'childishness'  of  many 
of  the  tales  of  savages  is  born  of  the  inability  or  disinclination 
of  the  occasional  visitant  or  prejudiced  resident  among  savage 
peoples  to  thoroughly  seize  and  comprehend  their  ways  and 
means  of  expression.  Very  often  these  are  rather  'child-like' 
than  'childish.' 

From  the  collation  of  fifty-six  children's  stories  (thirty-two  by 
boys,  twenty-four  by  girls) — '  the  stories  were  told,  not  written,  by 
the  children  at  school,  they  being  allowed  perfect  freedom  in 
telling  anything  they  wished,  the  stories  not  being  criticised  in 
any  way' — Miss  Clara  Vostrovsky,  of  the  experimental  school 
connected  with  Stanford  University,  California,  thus  sums  up  the 
differences  between  the  child's  story  as  told  by  himself  and  the 
same  story  told  for  him  by  an  adult :  '  In  the  child's  story  no 
sentiment  is  expressed  ;  nor  are  his  own  feelings  referred  to  in 
any  way.  There  is  little  of  the  aesthetic;  no  description  of 
dress  or  persons  [the  story  was  of  a  little  garden  party] ;  and 
not  general,  but  definite,  names  are  used  by  him.  On  the 
whole,  the  child  gives  facts,  and  lets  life  itself  speak  for  him. 
He  has  not  yet  learned  that  one  can  be  in  active  pleasant 
circumstances  and  not  be  happy.  With  him  certain  facts  or 
1  Morals,  HI.  p.  315. 


346 


THE   CHILD 


conditions  produce  certain  inevitable  reactions,  and  to  mention 
these  reactions  seems  to  liim  an  utter  waste  of  words.  Be- 
sides he  has  not  yet  reached  tlie  unfortunate  stayc  of  thinl<ing 
of  them  '  (671,  p.  16).  Not  a  few  of  the  cluiracleristics  here 
mentioned  l)elong  also  to  the  earHest  forms  of  story-telling  in 
the  race,  and  the  resenibiance  is,  naturally  enough,  all  the 
closer  when  the  oral,  not  written  tale  of  the  child  is  compared 
with  the  unwritten  stories  of  the  savage.  The  omission  of  the 
apparent  and  the  inevitable  is  often  marked  in  the  myths  of 
savage  and  barbarous  peoples,  and  the  absence  of  such  to  us 
(who  seek  to  interpret  them)  very  necessary  links  has  often  led 
to  great  misunderstanding. 

It  further  apj)ears  that  actions  and  names  fill  a  very  large 
place  in  the  child's  mind— feeling,  sentiment,  aesthetic  details, 
moral  distinctions,  etc.,  playing  quite  an  insignificant  ivk. 
Moreover,  *  no  great  difference  is  shown  in  the  chart  between 
boys  and  girls,  although  boys  sccm  to  care  a  little  more  for 
action,  while  girls  care  decidedly  more  for  what  is  said.' 

The  general  run  of  the  subjects  dealt  with  can  be  seen 
from  the  following  table  : — 


Stories  about  the  child  himself  or 

about  other  children  .  .  40 
About  older  persons  .  .  .1 
Aliout  other  subjects  .  .  .15 
True  stories  .  .  .  .49 
Imaginary  ....     7 


About  every  -  day  subjects  and 
things  of  common  occurrence 
with  the  child         .         .         .II 

Unusual  events,  trips,  parties, 
etc 45 


Mental  and  Emotional  Characters  of  Primitive  Peoples. — 
Concerning  the  Cucamas  Indians,  a  Tupi  tribe  of  the  Upper 
Amazons,  in  Peru,  Mr  H.  W.  Bates  observes  (42,  p.  259) :  '  The 
goodness  of  these  Indians,  like  that  of  most  others  amongst 
whom  I  lived,  consisted  perhaps  more  in  the  active  bad  qualities 
than  in  the  possession  of  good  ones ;  in  other  words,  it  was 
negative  rather  than  positive.  Their  phlegmatic,  apathetic 
temperament,  coldness  of  desire,  and  deadness  of  feeling,  want 
of  curiosity  and  slowness  of  intellect,  make  the  Amazonian 
Indians  very  uninteresting  companions  anywhere.'  Not  only 
is  '  their  want  of  curiosity  extreme '  (though  a  dash  of  wit 
appears  here  and  there),  but  '  their  imagination  is  of  a  dull, 
gloomy  quality,'  and  they  also  '  seem  never  to  be  stirred  by 
the  emotions — love,  pity,  admiration,  fear,  wonder,  joy,  en- 
thusiasm.'   These,  according  to  Mr  Bates,  are  '  characteristics 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  347 

of  the  whole  race,'  and  the  good  fellowship  of  these  Indians 
'  seems  to  arise,  not  from  warm  sympathy,  but  simply  from  the 
absence  of  eager  selfishness  in  small  matters.' 

Dr  Franz  Bons  (60,  p.  21),  who,  by  scientific  training  and 
long  personal  experience  with  the  aborigines  of  North 
America,  is  well  qualified  to  speak  upon  such  matters,  tells  us 
how  '  the  descriptions  of  the  state  of  mind  of  primitive  people, 
such  as  are  given  by  most  travellers,  are  too  superficial  to  be 
used  for  psychological  investigation,'  and  how  little  there  really 
is  in  the  statement  that  certain  mental  qualities  are  'racial 
characteristics  of  the  lower  groups  of  mankind.'  The  evidence 
is  very  fallible ;  the  traveller  is  a  prejudiced  witness  from  the 
beginning;  the  missionary  has  his  mind  strongly  set  against 
the  religious  ideas  and  customs  of  the  savage ;  the  trader  is 
without  interest  in  their  beliefs,  their  arts  and  their  institutions  ; 
the  Greek  scholar  looks  on  their  language  as  a  senseless 
jargon ;  while  few  men,  and  still  fewer  women,  have  resided 
among  primitive  peoples  long  enough  and  entered  into  their 
whole  life  sympathetically  enough  to  be  much  more  than 
'observers  of  disconnected  actions,  the  incentive  of  which 
remains  unknown.' 

Fickleness. — The  fickleness  of  primitive  man  figures  in  the 
modern  text-books  of  psychology  as  one  of  his  most  fundamental 
traits,  but,  as  Dr  Boas  remarks,  '  the  proper  way  to  compare 
the  fickleness  of  the  savage  and  that  of  the  white  is  to  com- 
pare their  behaviour  in  undertakings  which  are  equally  im- 
portant to  each,'  and  'the  alleged  fickleness  may  always  be 
explained  by  a  difference  of  the  valuation  of  motives,  and  is  not 
a  specific  characteristic  of  primitive  man.'  The  white  man's 
'  fuming  and  raging '  over  loss  of  time,  and  lack  of  interest  on 
the  part  of  his  native  companions  or  employees,  must  appear 
to  them  strange,  who  have  no  such  conception  of  the  value  of 
time  and  no  such  interest  in  the  particular  subject  as  he. 
That  primitive  man  has  perseverance,  however,  and  in  a  high 
degree,  is  abundantly  shown  by  the  time  and  care  he  takes  with 
his  weapons,  utensils  and  art  products,  the  privations  and 
hardships  he  undergoes  to  satisfy  his  ambition,  and  the 
fasting  and  other  strenuous  ceremonials  to  which  he  submits 
as  a  preliminary  to  taking  his  place  among  the  men  and 
warriors  of  his  tribe.  Primitive  man  is  fickle  where  all  human 
beings  are  fickle,  but  not  specially  so. 

Passion. — Another  thing  said  to  mark  primitive  man  as 


348  THE    CHILD 

such  is  '  outbursts  of  passion  occasioned  by  slight  provocation.' 
Here  again,  as  Dr  Boas  points  out,  the  social  status  of  the 
white  and  the  savage  is  so  different,  tliat  if  perseverance 
and  control  of  [Kissiun  seem  less  eoninion  witli  savage  and 
harbarijus  i)eoples,  'the  cause  nuist  be  looked  for  not  in  the 
inherent  ability  to  produce  them,  but  in  the  social  status  which 
does  not  demand  them  to  the  same  extent.'  The  manifold 
and  complicated  customs,  restrictions,  taboos,  etc.,  concerning 
marriage  and  the  sex-relations,  religion,  food  supply,  and  the 
like,  are  sufficient  evidence  that,  with  primitive  man,  '  his 
passions  are  just  as  much  controlled  as  ours,  only  in  different 
directions.'  The  irrelevancy  of  the  question  of  the  rights  of 
slaves,  which  caused  the  outburst  of  '  the  noble  passion  which 
preceded  and  accompanied  the  War  of  the  Rebellion,'  would, 
Dr  Boas  assures  us,  with  not  a  few  primitive  peoples,  rank  the 
great  struggle  of  the  North  and  South,  in  its  highest  aspects, 
an  unjustifiable  outburst  of  passion.  Here,  also,  the  difference 
between  primitive  and  civilised  man  has  been  exaggerated  by 
ignoring  the  common  human  characteristics  and  the  special 
circumstances  evoking  them. 

Lack  of  Co7icentration. — No  trait  of  primitive  man,  how- 
ever, according  to  the  school  of  Spencer  and  the  book- 
psychologists,  is  more  characteristic  than  '  his  inability  of  con- 
centration when  any  demand  is  made  upon  the  more  complex 
faculties  of  his  intellect.'  Fortunately  we  have  concerning  this 
point  the  evidence  of  two  witnesses,  between  whom  it  is  not 
hard  to  decide.  G.  M.  Sproat,  who  visited  the  natives  of  the 
west  coast  of  Vancouver  Island  in  i860,  says  of  them:  'The 
native  mind,  to  an  educated  man,  seems  generally  to  be 
asleep.  .  .  .  On  his  attention  being  fully  aroused,  he 
often  shows  much  quickness  in  reply  and  ingenuity  in  argu- 
ment. But  a  short  conversation  wearies  him,  particularly  if 
questions  are  asked  that  require  efforts  of  thought  or  memory 
on  his  part.  The  mind  of  the  savage  then  appears  to  rock  to 
and  fro  out  of  mere  weakness.'  Concerning  this  passage, 
which  Spencer  and  other  writers  have  quoted  approvingly,  Dr 
Boas  himself  declares  :  '  I  happen  to  know  the  tribes  mentioned 
by  Sproat  through  personal  contact.  The  questions  put  by 
the  traveller  seem  most  trifling  to  the  Indian,  and  he  naturally 
soon  tires  of  a  conversation  carried  on  in  a  foreign  language 
and  one  in  which  he  finds  nothing  to  interest  him.  I  can 
assure  you  that  the  interest  of  those  natives  can  easily  be  raised 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  349 

to  a  high  pitch,  and  that  I  have  often  been  the  one  who  was 
wearied  out  first.'  This  will  be  corroborated  by  anyone  who 
has  really  entered  into  the  life  of  primitive  man — his  art,  his 
religion,  his  folk-lore.  Moreover,  '  the  intricate  system  of 
exchange,'  'the  systematic  distribution  (planned  without 
mnemonic  aids)  of  property  in  such  a  manner  as  to  increase 
their  wealth  and  social  position,'  to  say  nothing  of  the  other 
characteristic  activities  of  these  Indians,  afford  ample  proof  of 
their  mental  awakeness,  and  'require  great  foresight  and  con- 
stant application.'  Careful  studies  of  other  primitive  peoples 
would  doubtless  result  in  similar  discoveries. 

Originality. — Again,  it  is  far  too  customary  to  stigmatise 
primitive  man  as  altogether  '  hide-bound,'  ultra-conservative, 
and  especially  as  '  lacking  originality,'  and  never  being 
willing  or  able  to  'deviate  from  the  traditional  customs  and 
beliefs.'  Although  custom  is,  naturally,  stronger,  where  it 
is  more  useful  and  necessary  in  social  life,  among  primitive 
peoples,  they  cannot  justly  be  charged  with  a  complete  lack  of 
originality.  Dr  Boas  cites  as  proving  the  existence  of  a 
considerable  fund  of  originality  among  the  lower  races  of  men 
'  the  great  frequency  of  the  appearance  of  prophets  among 
newly-converted  tribes,  as  well  as  among  pagan  tribes,'  the 
frequent  introduction  of  '  new  dogmas  by  individuals,'  the 
numerous  changes  in  myths  and  beliefs  'accomplished  by  the 
independent  thought  of  individuals,'  and  holds  that  'the 
mental  altitude  of  individuals  who  thus  develop  the  beliefs  of  a 
tribe  is  exactly  that  of  the  modern  philosopher,'  for  even  with 
us  '  the  mind  of  even  the  greatest  genius  is  influenced  by  the 
current  thought  of  his  time.' 

Interesting  data  upon  this  topic  are  to  be  found  in  the 
elaborate  study  of  the  '  Ghost-dance  '  religion  of  the  Indians 
of  the  Western  and  North-western  United  States,  recently  made 
by  Mr  James  Mooney,  who  remarks :  '  Briefly  and  broadly  it 
may  be  stated  that  the  more  primitive  a  people  the  more 
original  their  thought.  Indian  prophets  are  usually  original 
as  to  their  main  doctrine,  but  are  quick  to  borrow  anything 
that  may  serve  to  make  it  more  impressive.' 

If  the  savage  is  to  be  compared  with  the  child,  it  cannot  be 
along  the  lines  of  unlimited  fickleness,  outbursts  of  passion 
with  but  slight  cause,  lack  of  power  of  mental  concentration, 
weak  interest,  mental  inertness,  lack  of  originality,  etc.,  but  the 
comparison  must  take  place  along  the  lines  of  development 


350 


THE    CIIII.I) 


of  these  and  otlicr  characteristics  in  the  special  circumstances 
under  wliich  they  arise  and  evolve.  The  savage  may  be  a 
child,  it  is  true,  but  he  is  a  very  human  child,  and  'father 
of  the  man,'  here  as  elsewhere.  General  impulsiveness  i.s,  in 
fact,  too  vague  and  general  an  accusation,  and  one  which  fails 
in  so  many  specific  cases  that  one  may  reasonably  doubt 
the  existence  of  .specific  differences  in  this  regard  between 
the  Mower'  and  'higher'  races  of  man,  apart  from  social  and 
environmental  stimuli. 

Impnwidence. — Improvidence  is  often  said  to  be  character- 
istic alike  of  the  savage  and  the  child,  and  Herbert  Spencer 
and  other  writers  have  attributed  this  '  mark  of  primitive  man  ' 
to  his  general  impulsiveness.  But  Dr  Boas,  who  knows  the 
savage  well,  tells  us  (60,  p.  22):  'I  believe  it  would  be  more 
proper  to  say,  instead  of  improvidence,  optimism.  "  Why 
should  I  not  be  as  successful  to-morrow  as  I  was  to  day  ?  " 
is  the  guiding  thought  of  primitive  man.  This  thought  is, 
I  think,  not  less  powerful  in  civilised  man.  What  builds  up 
business  activity  but  the  belief  in  the  stability  of  existing 
conditions?'  There  is  then  'a  difference  in  the  degree  of 
improvidence  caused  by  the  difference  of  social  status,'  but 
there  is  in  this  respect  no  'specific  difference  between  lower 
and  higher  types  of  man.'  The  true  savage  is  optimistic  as  the 
real  child  is,  and  the  genius  who  '  takes  no  thought  for 
the  morrow.'  In  a  sense,  all  believe  in  the  immortality 
of  conditions  and  opportunities  as  well  as  in  that  of  individuals 
or  entities.  For  them  the  world  is  one  long  to-day.  As  the 
little  Italian  girl  said  when  promised  something  to-morrow  : 
'To-day  is  already  to-morrow' (369,  p.  188).  Mr  Hartland 
tells  us  that  the  fairy-tales  in  which  the  hero  'detained  in 
Fairyland  is  unconscious  of  the  flight  of  time '  are  really 
'characteristic  of  a  high  rather  than  a  low  stage  of  civilisation.' 
(286,  p.  254).  The  Dumagas  of  the  Philippines,  so  Dr 
Brinton  informs  us,^  w^hen  the  missionaries  tried  to  persuade 
them  to  settle  down  and  adopt  sedentary  habits,  made 
answer  'that  their  religion  forbade  them  to  take  thought 
for  the  morrow,  but  to  trust  wholly  in  their  gods  to  provide.' 
The  sacred  scriptures  of  the  Semitic  populations  of  Western 
Asia  are  not  more  optimistic  than  this.  It  can  only  be 
compared  with  the  optimism  of  the  child. 

Savage  and  Civilised. — Professor  O.  T.  Mason,  in  his  paper 
'^  Amer.  Anthr.,  XI.  p.  301. 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  35 1 

on  'The  Savage  Mind  in  the  Presence  of  CiviHsation  '  (414, 
p.  45),  insists  that  '  the  only  valuable  education  to  a  lower  race 
is  that  which  enables  the  subjects  to  develop  their  highest 
energies  and  intelligence  among  those  where  their  lives  are  to 
be  passed.  In  its  true  and  widest  sense  education  is  not 
confined  to  school  instruction  [highly  stimulated  savages,  who 
are  merely  schooled,  either  perish  miserably  or  become  lazaroni 
among  their  own  people,  or  the  dominant  race].  It  embraces 
all  that  changes  in  the  presence  of  higher  culture.'  Moreover, 
'functions  [which  vary  more  easily  than  structure]  may  change 
many  times  in  the  life  of  an  individual,  but  the  edifice  of 
the  body  politic,  the  ftunily,  and  the  church,  can  be  recon- 
structed only  with  the  greatest  wisdom  and  patience.'  Contact 
with  good,  honest,  just  and  law-abiding  whites  will  do  more  to 
reform  the  dress,  the  habits,  and,  where  necessary  or  possible, 
the  beliefs  and  institutions  of  the  Indians,  than  the  '  education  ' 
of  a  few,  who  find  themselves  in  large  part  unable  to  keep  from 
relapsing  into  the  ways  of  their  kinsmen  or  abandoning  them- 
selves to  the  vice  and  crime  of  the  whites.  Sudden  sub- 
stitution is  hardly  ever  quite  safe;  gradual  transformation  is 
nearly  always  infinitely  better.  It  is  absolutely  necessary  to 
pay  attention  to  the  graduations,  '  stages  of  culture,'  and  social 
evolutions  which  are  known  to  have  taken  place  in  the  history 
of  the  innumerable  tribes  of  man.  'There  are  certain  lines  or 
categories  of  culture,'  says  Professor  Mason,  'such  as  food, 
dress,  shelter,  war,  industry,  ornament,  gratification,  traffic, 
family  organisation,  government  and  religion,  along  which 
there  has  been  evolution  and  elaboration,'  and  among  these 
categories  'there  is  gradation,  nearly  in  the  order  named.' 
Since  it  is  '  more  difficult  for  a  people  to  change  in  the  higher 
and  more  intellectual  than  in  the  lower  categories,'  it  will 
generally  be  found  'easier  to  induce  a  people  to  change  food, 
dress,  implements,  weapons,  etc,'  than  to  alter  their  language, 
kinship,  government  and  religion.' 

Here  again  a  comparison  may  be  made  with  the  develop- 
ment of  child-life,  a  comparison  which  brings  out  what  is  really 
best  in  the  child  and  in  the  savage. 

Karl  von  den  Steinen,  whose  intimate  knowledge  of  the 
primitive  peoples  of  Central  Brazil  endues  his  words  with 
great  significance,  observes :  '  Savagery,  as  it  really  is,  finds 
still  deep  lodgment  in  our  brains  and  hearts,  and  seems  to  us 
in  many  ways  an  honourable  and  estimable  possession.     The 


j:)- 


THE   CHILD 


culture  of  primitive  peoples  is,  on  the  average,  much  higher, 
ours  much  lower,  than  generally  appraised.' 

So  also  Dr  Donath,  who  lays  great  stress  upon  the  evidence 
just  cited  :  '  However  low,  mentally,  the  stage  of  primitive  man 
may  be,  it  is,  after  all,  mostly  conditioned  by  external  circum- 
stances, especially  by  lack  of  exercise.  The  brain  organisation 
of  primitive  man,  I  believe,  allows  him  a  capacity  for  mental 
develoi)ment,  which  is  hardly  less  than  that  of  the  averagely 
endowed  European'  (171,  p.  46). 

The  best  recent  studies  of  language,  sociology,  psychology 
(numeration,  colour-sense,  association  of  ideas,  mind-content, 
senses  and  will)  seem  to  support  this  view. 

Racial  and  Individual  Development. — Dr  Franz  Boas  (60, 
p.  7),  in  endeavouring  to  answer  the  question  why  the  ancient 
inhabitants  of  Europe  were  'able  so  easily  to  assimilate  the 
culture  offered  them,'  where  at  the  present  time  '  primitive 
people  dwindle  away  and  become  degraded  before  the  approach 
of  civilisation,  instead  of  being  elevated  by  it,'  a  question 
which  has  often  been  answered  by  assuming  *a  higher 
organisation  of  the  inhabitants  of  Europe,'  enumerates  the 
following  interesting  points  of  difference  between  the  contact  ot 
culture  and  barbarism  now  and  then  :  i.  The  primitive  people 
of  ancient  times  were  alike  in  appearance  with  the  civilised 
man  of  their  day,  and  '  it  was  possible  that,  in  the  colonies  of 
ancient  times,  society  could  grow  by  accretion  from  among  the 
more  primitive  people.  2.  The  '  permanent  contiguity  of  the 
people  of  the  Old  World,  who  were  always  in  contact  with  each 
other,  and  therefore  subject  to  the  same  influences,'  did  not 
permit  'the  devastating  influences  of  diseases  [(/,  the  epidemics 
following  the  advent  of  the  whites  into  America  and  Poly- 
nesia], which  nowadays  begin  to  ravage  the  inliabitants  of 
territories  newly  opened  to  the  whites,'  to  play  so  great  a  fvle 
in  the  past  as  now.  3.  The  contrast  between  the  culture 
represented  by  the  modern  white  and  that  of  primitive  man 
'is  far  more  fundamental  than  that  between  the  ancients 
and  the  people  with  whom  they  came  into  contact;'  to-day,  e.g., 
modern  methods  of  manufacture  exterminate  the  industries  of 
primitive  peoples,  whereas,  in  olden  times,  the  rivalry  was 
between  two  hand-products  only.  4.  In  not  a  few  parts  of  the 
world,  e.g.,  America  and  portions  of  Siberia,  '  the  primitive 
tribes  are  swamped  by  the  numbers  of  the  immigrating  race,' 
which  '  crowds  them  so  rapidly  out  of  their  own  haunts  that 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   SAVAGE  353 

no  time  for  gradual  assimilation  is  given' — a  state  of  affairs 
hardly  known  in  ancient  times. 

The  more  favourable  conditions  for  assimilation  of  the 
primitive  tribes,  and  not  the  higher  gifts  of  the  civilised,  seem, 
so  far  as  the  story  of  European  civilisations  is  concerned,  to 
have  been  a  most  potent  factor  in  their  preservation  and 
advancement  in  culture. 

An  interesting  parallel  might  be  made  here  between  the 
treatment  of  children  by  adults  in  the  way  of  supervision 
and  education  and  the  modern  impact  of  civilisation  upon 
primitive  man.  If  there  actually  have  been  more  geniuses 
in  proportion  to  the  population  in  ancient  times  and  in  certain 
quarters  of  the  globe,  the  facts  noted  by  Dr  Boas  miglit, 
in  part,  account  for  it. 

To-day,  adults  emphasise  too  much  the  individual 
differences,  instead  of  the  genial  likenesses  of  all  children, 
rendering  difficult  the  proper  growth  of  the  general  social 
virtues  and  the  fundamental  traits  of  genius  ;  lack  of  '  co- 
education '  at  the  right  epoch,  the  absence  of  the  real  mother 
so  often  among  the  teaching  profession,  and  of  the  best 
atmosphere  of  family-life  in  the  school — education  being  so 
often  bachelor-ridden  and  old-maid-ridden — tend  in  the  same 
direction.  The  school-boy  is  so  often  an  entirely  different 
animal  from  the  home-boy  that  diseases  of  various  sorts 
find  much  easier  lodgment  with  the  one  than  with  the  other. 
Adults  emphasise  too  much  the  gap  between  the  wisdom  of 
childhood  and  their  own  knowledge,  and  exterminate  the 
genius  of  the  young  by  the  school-machinery  of  their  own 
invention.  Often,  too,  the  child  is  literally  swamped  by  the 
mass  of  adults  about  him,  who  do  not  give  him  time  at  all 
to  grow  naturally  and  in  his  own  best  fashion  i 

1  See  Dr.  F.  Boas,  "The  Mind  of  Primitive  Man"  [fount.  Ai/ter.  Folk- 
Lore,  Vol.  XIV.,  1901,  pp.  I-Ii),  and  "  Some  Traits  of  Primiiive  Culture" 
(Ibid.,  Vol.  XVHI.,  1904,  pp.  243-254),  for  authoritative  discussion  of 
the  psychological  aspects  of  early  human  culture  in  relation  to  the  pheno- 
mena of  child-life.  Also  A.  F.  Chamberlain,  "  \'ariation  in  I'^arly  Human 
Culture"  (Jourii.  A/iier.  Folk-Lore,  Vol.  XIX.,  1906,  pp.  177-190),  for  a 
consideration  of  the  divergences  of  early  human  acts,  customs,  etc. 


THE    '  PEAR    MOTHER.' 

Slate  Carvfng  of  Haida  Indians,  representing  the  agony  of  the  mother  in  suckli: 
chikl,  half-human,  half-animal  (from  Rep.  U.S.  Nat.  Mns.,  1888). 


her 


CHAPTER    IX 

THE   CHILD    AND    THE   CRIMINAL 

Lombfoso  and  Crijninal  AntJiropoIogy. — In  1876  Professor 
Cesare  Lombroso,  of  Turin,  published,  under  the  title  Uomo 
Delifiqitcnte  (363),  the  first  volume  of  a  book  which  may  be 
said  to  have  created  the  so-called  '  Italian  School '  of  criminal 
anthropologists.  The  literature  on  the  subject  since  that  time 
has  assumed  huge  proportions,  the  theses  of  the  Italian 
psychiatrist  having  been  debated  pro  and  con  in  almost 
every  language  of  Europe,  the  books  treating  of  the  subject 
now  numbering  hundreds,  the  pamphlets,  minor  essays  and 
articles  counting  up  their  thousands.  The  gist  of  the  dis- 
cussions may  be  read  in  the  article  of  Dr  Robert  Fletcher 
(216)  and  the  volume  on  The  Criminal  (184),  by  Havelock 
Ellis,  while  some  of  the  more  recent  data  are  treated  of  in 
Ferriani  (202).  The  chief  points  of  Lombroso's  theories,  for 
our  present  interest,  lie  in  the  approximations  which  he  sought 
to  establish  between  the  criminal,  the  savage  and  the  child. 

From  extended  and  repeated  observations  of  the  anomalies, 
abnormalities,  defects  and  imperfections  of  the  body,  its  mem- 
bers and  organs,  anatomically,  physiologically  and  psycho- 
logically considered,  Lombroso  came  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  criminal  was  physically  atavistic,  inheriting  forms  and 
peculiarities  from  both  ancient  historic  and  prehistoric  man. 
From  similar  data  he  also  sought  to  make  out  analogies 
between  the  criminal  and  the  lunatic,  epileptic  and  other 
degenerate  classes  of  humanity.  This  association  of  the 
criminal  with  the  savage  and  the  lunatic  had  also  been  made 
some  five  or  six  years  before  the  appearance  of  Lombroso's 
book  by  Dr  Bruce  Thomson,  of  Perth,  Scotland,  in  an  article 
on  '  The  Hereditary  Nature  of  Crime,'  ^  where  he  notes  the 
difficulty  of  determining  'where  badness  ends  and  madness 
^  Journ.  MeiiL  Sa'.,  Jan.  1870. 

355  24 


356  THE   CHILD 

begins  in  criminals,'  and  remarks,  concerning  the  criminal 
class,  who  have  their  locale  and  community  in  the  large  cities, 
'  they  degenerate  into  a  set  of  demi-civilised  savages,  who  in 
hordes  prey  upon  society ' ;  these,  he  says,  are  '  born  into 
crime,  as  well  as  reared,  nurtured  and  instructed  in  it,  and 
habit  becomes  a  new  force,  a  second  nature,  superinduced 
upon  their  original  moral  depravity ' ;  and  '  from  such  physical 
we  naturally  expect  low  psychical  characteristics ' ;  we  get 
thus  a  criminal  type.  Beside  the  atavistic  argument  Lom- 
broso  put  forward  another  based  upon  the  phenomena  of 
childhood.  Gathering  together  from  Moreau,  Bain,  Perez 
and  others,  observations  and  statements  concerning  the  male- 
volent and  maleficent  instincts  and  impulses  of  children,  their 
egoism,  cruelty,  etc.,  he  made  the  generalisation  that  'the 
germs  of  moral  insanity  and  crime  occur  in  normal  fashion 
during  the  first  years  of  man's  life,  just  as  in  the  embryo  we 
are  constantly  meeting  with  forms  which,  in  the  adult,  are 
monstrosities.'  Both  the  atavistic  argument  and  the  argument 
from  childhood  he  combined  in  the  declaration  that  the 
criminal,  himself  recalling  the  savage  and  prehistoric  man, 
can  be  seen,  on  a  reduced  scale,  in  the  child,  while  the 
criminal,  subject  to  an  arrest  which  has  prevented  the  trans- 
formation of  these  tendencies  of  early  life,  may  be  looked 
upon  as  'a  sort  of  incomplete  product,  which  retains  in  adult 
life  the  ordinary  normal  attributes  of  childhood'  (143, 
pp.  59-61). 

Criticisms  of  Lomhroso's  TJieory. — Among  those  who  criti- 
cised the  Lombrosan  view  of  a  rapprochejnent  between  the 
child  and  the  criminal  were,  in  the  earlier  stages  of  the  dis- 
cussion, Magnan,  Tarde,  Benedikt,  Dortel,  Fere,  etc.  Magnan 
(143,  p.  61)  maintained  that  children  who  seemed  to  present, 
in  a  sort  of  embryonal  fashion,  the  criminal  type  were  '  not 
normal  but  degenerate';  Dortel  (143,  p.  61)  held  that  'while 
the  criminal  had  certain  peculiarities  of  the  child,  the  child,  on 
the  other  hand,  had  nothing  of  the  criminal  about  him  ' ;  Tarde 
(143,  p.  61)  argued  against  the  existence  of  'a  childhood 
instinctively  maleficent,'  pointing  out  that  'gentle,  generous 
and  disinterested  children  existed,  just  as  surely  as  the 
egoistical  and  evil-disposed.' 

Tarde,  who  is  a  magistrate  as  well  as  a  philosopher,  criti- 
cised also  the  other  theories  of  Lombroso  :  Madmen  there 
doubtless  were  among  criminals,  but  not   every  law-breaker 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   CRIMINAL  357 

was  a  lunatic;  the  most  degenerate  are  far  from  being  the 
most  criminal — indeed,  the  most  dangerous  criminals  are  often 
the  least  degenerate  ;  if  there  is  a  connection  between  the 
savage  and  the  criminal,  the  recruiting  of  criminals  more  and 
more  from  the  refined  and  corrupted  environment  of  the  great 
cities  of  modern  civilisation  is  fast  destroying  the  resemblance; 
and  imitation  counts  for  much,  very  much;  so,  too,  the 
sociological  factors. 

Colajanni  (116),  rejecting  physical  atavism  as  the  cause  of 
crime,  sought  to  find  its  explanation  in  'psychic  atavism,' 
*  moral  atavism,'  his  theory  being  founded  u[)on  '  the  com- 
parison between  the  savages  of  to-day  and  civilised  criminals, 
the  analogy  between  criminals  and  children  (a  transitory  re- 
production of  the  moral  past  of  our  ancestors),  and  the  pos- 
session in  common  of  certain  traits  by  criminals  and  the 
lower  classes,  the  belated  ones  of  civilisation'  (143,  p.  121). 
Crime  for  him  is  a  social,  not  a  biological,  product,  but  it  is 
difficult  to  see  how  one  can  have  '  psychic  atavism '  without  at 
least  some  sort  of  physical  atavism.  Thus  Garofalo  (143, 
p.  134),  one  of  the  most  prominent  of  the  Italian  crimino- 
logists, seeks  an  organic  deviation  upon  which  to  base  the 
psychic  anomaly  of  crime.  Garofalo  considers  the  typical 
criminal  '  a  monster  of  the  moral  order,  having  characters  in 
common  with  savages  and  other  characters  which  belong  even 
lower  down  than  the  human  race ' ;  he  is  largely  abnormal  as 
compared  with  civilised  man,  not  so  much  pathological  as 
abnormal.  He  seems  sometimes  to  lay  emphasis  on  atavism 
to  a  bestial  type  preceding  prehistoric  man  or  the  savage 
peoples  of  to-day.  Another  point  which  he  raises  is,  that 
'while  prehistoric  man,  living  alone  with  his  family,  could 
have  no  conception  whatever  of  altruistic  sentiments,  the 
criminal  from  birth  lives  in  social  surroundings,  degraded,  no 
doubt,  but  of  which  he  deliberately  ignores  the  duty'  (216, 
p.  210).  So,  too,  as  to  the  connection  with  the  child  in  some 
measure. 

With  the  partisans  of  the  sociological  school — for  whom 
'crime  is  largely  a  social  product'- — the  connections  asserted 
by  Lombroso  lose  their  force,  environment,  education,  family 
life,  social  contact,  professions,  condition  of  the  working- 
classes,  alcoholism,  low  forms  of  amusement  and  excitement, 
etc.,  being  regarded  as  the  great  determining  factors. 

Lacassagne,  the  head  of  the  Lyons  school,  declares  epi- 


358  THE   CHILD 

grammatically  (143,  p-  157) :  'The  social  milieu  is  the  culturc- 
brolh  of  criminality ;  the  criminal  is  the  microbe,  an  element 
having  importance  on  that  day  alone  when  it  finds  the  broth 
suited  to  make  it  ferment.  Societies  have  only  the  criminals 
tliey  deserve.'  The  criminal /f/-  se  has  a  very  mediocre  import- 
ance ;  he  is  not  a  type,  since  honest  folks  from  time  to  time 
manifest  one  or  all  of  his  anthropological  characters.  Against 
the  fatalism,  which  seems  inevitably  linked  with  the  anthropo- 
metric theory  of  crime,  Lacassagne  places  the  '  social  initiative.' 
Another  able  defender  of  the  theory  of  the  predominance  of 
the  social  factor  in  the  production  of  crime  is  Manouvrier 
(143,  p.  161),  in  Paris;  others  of  somewhat  the  same  mind 
are,  in  Russia,  Orchansky ;  in  Belgium,  Prins  ;  in  Germany, 
Baer  and  Niicke  ;  in  Italy,  Morselli. 

Dr  Kirn,  of  Freiburg,  in  IJavaria,  writing  in  1893,  thus 
expresses  his  opinion  of  the  criminal  (327,  p.  712) :  'Certainly 
the  criminal,  so  far  as  character  is  concerned,  has  not  the 
slightest  in  common  with  the  primitive  man  or  the  child,  for 
in  both  the  last  it  is  a  question  of  as  yet  undeveloped  moral 
idea,  in  the  former  we  have  to  deal  with  a  degeneration  of 
character.'  Crime  is  largely  not  an  atavism  but  the  result  of 
human  social  relations,  and  criminal  anthropology  forms  but 
one  chapter  in  the  anthropology  of  degeneracy.  Occasional 
criminals,  indeed,  are,  as  a  rule,  mentally  sound  but  weak 
morally.  Criminals  of  passion,  occasion  and  habit  are  none 
of  them  a  separate  type,  atavistic  or  infantile. 

A  searching  criticism  of  the  Lombrosan  theories  was 
published  in  1S96  by  Professor  D.  Sernoff,  of  the  University 
of  Moscow,  based  upon  anatomical  investigations,  and  em- 
bodying the  thesis  that:  'The  born  criminal  in  Lombroso's 
sense  has  no  real  existence  ;  that  being  which,  according  to 
the  description  of  Lombroso,  is  branded  in  germ  by  the  stamp 
of  lower  animal  organisms,  and  meets  us  in  almost  every 
second  inmate  of  a  prison — that  Orang-Utang,  as  Taine  calls 
him — does  not  exist  in  mankind'  (586,  p.  343). 

Orchansky,  in  his  study,  '  Russian  Criminals  and  the 
Theory  of  Lombroso'  (465),  based  upon  the  examination  of 
some  3000  prisoners  and  200  crania,  controverts  many  of  the 
chief  tenets  of  the  Italian  criminologist.  He  finds  no  greater 
proportion  of  lunatics  among  criminals  than  among  normal 
subjects,  and  no  typical  criminal  physiognomy.  For  Orchansky 
'crime  is  the  result  of  bad  social  hygiene.'     In  other  words,  it 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   CRIMINAL  359 

is  '  not  that  bad  people  create  crime,  but  that  bad  conditions 
make  criminals  out  of  the  weak  and  the  ignorant.' 

A  recent  Brazilian  writer,  Dr  J.  A.  Peixoto,  in  his  thesis 
on  '  Epilepsy  and  Crime '  (483),  holds  that  criminals  are  '  essen- 
tially normal  individuals  whom  the  society  of  the  day  has  not 
been  able  to  submit  to  its  domination,'  crime  itself  being  a 
natural  product  of  the  social  organism.  Criminals,  persisting 
through  the  ages,  represent  primitively,  although  now  only 
'refractory  beings,'  some  of  the  moving  spirits  in  the  formation 
of  the  earliest  societies  among  men.  AH  '  refractory  spirits,' 
however,  are  not  criminals.  Some,  egoistic  to  the  end,  attack 
society  and  force  it  to  serve  their  fears,  ambitions,  hates  and 
passions,  using  the  cannon,  the  sword  or  the  torch  ;  others  lift 
up  against  society  the  arms  of  speech  and  logic  alone,  moved 
by  altruistic  desires  for  its  improvement  and  reformation. 
The  world  will  always  distinguish  its  Jesus  from  its  Napoleon, 
its  Alexander  from  its  Tolstoi.  Criminals,  themselves,  Peixoto 
thinks,  fall  into  three  chief  categories:  (i)  The  anti-social 
rebels ;  (2)  a  mixed  type,  partly  influenced  by  degeneration ; 
(3)  a  symptomatic  type  of  complete  mental  degeneracy. 

Of  the  '  political  criminal '  Lombroso  and  Proal  have 
written  at  length,  but,  as  Havelock  Ellis  observes  (184,  p.  i), 
there  are  different  sorts  of  political  '  crime  '  and  different  ways 
of  rewarding  it  :  '  Consequently  the  "  political  criminal  "  of  one 
time  or  place  may  be  the  hero,  martyr,  saint  of  another  land 
or  age.  The  political  criminal  is,  as  Lombroso  calls  him,  "  the 
true  precursor  of  the  progressive  movement  of  humanity  "  ;  or, 
as  Benedikt  calls  him,  the  homo  nobilis  of  whom  the  highest 
type  is  Christ.'  Perhaps,  after  all,  it  is  the  '  political  criminal ' 
who  is  responsible  for  much  of  the  '  crime  '  of  childhood. 

One  of  the  best  books  on  the  anti-Lombrosan  side  is 
Baer's  Anthropological  Study  of  the  Criminal,  which  appeared 
in  1893.  According  to  Baer,  the  skull  of  the  criminal  has 
nothing  specific  about  it,  the  anomalies  are,  in  all  probability, 
mostly  of  a  pathological  nature,  and  the  so-called  'atavistic 
signs '  are  rare  phenomena  that  may  be  met  with  almost 
anywhere  among  men ;  nor  does  the  body  of  the  criminal  in 
size  and  general  characteristics  of  itself  and  its  organs  offer  any- 
thing that  can  be  looked  upon  as  marking  a  special  type,  indeed 
some  of  the  '  degenerate  signs  '  are  really  more  common  some- 
times in  non-criminal  individuals  ;  the  much-talked-of  '  criminal 
physiognomy '  also  affords  no  special  type ;  the  prevalence  of 


360  THE  CHILD 

left-handedness,  the  pain-obluseness  and  other  supposed  traits 
of  criminals  have  been  grossly  exaggerated.  In  short,  Baer 
holds  that  there  is  no  '  criminal  type,'  no  '  born  criminal '  in 
the  Lombrosan  sense.  Both  the  mental  and  the  physical  state 
of  the  criminal  are  those  of  the  social  class  to  which  he  belongs, 
the  community  of  which  he  is  a  part.  His  anomalies  of  mind 
and  body,  when  not  distinctly  pathological,  spring  from  his 
environment ;  arrests  of  development,  chance  and  accident 
play  their  ro/es  as  well.  Neither  i)hysically  nor  mentally  is  the 
criminal  '  an  atavistic  phenomenon,'  and  he  is  comparable 
neither  to  the  child  nor  to  primitive  man  (17). 

The  Criminal  and  the  Child. — In  an  address  before  a 
meeting  of  teachers  in  Turin,  during  the  summer  of  1895,^ 
Lombroso  gave  new  expression  to  his  views  regarding  crime 
and  the  child.  Anger,  lying,  cruelty,  lawlessness,  excessive 
vanity  and  selfishness,  obscene  tendencies,  passion  for  alcoholic 
drinks  (the  last  hitherto  much  underestimated)  are  so  character- 
istic of  childhood  as  to  make  the  great  Italian  psychiatrist 
think  very  little  of  the  purity  and  innocence  often  ascribed  to 
the  child,  who,  in  reality,  manifests,  during  the  early  years  of 
life,  so  many  criminal  tendencies  that,  especially  with  respect 
to  moral  feeling  and  actions,  the  habitual  criminal  seems  to  be 
one  who  has  remained  at  the  child's  stage  of  development  in 
these  and  other  kindred  matters. 

As  Dr  C.  Ufer  points  out  (657,  p.  74),  the  book  of  Baer, 
referred  to  above,  contains  an  excellent  presentation,  from 
another  point  of  view,  of  these  phenomena  of  childhood  of 
which  so  much  has  been  made  by  writers  of  the  Italian  school. 
Many  of  the  '  crimes  '  and  criminal  tendencies  of  childhood 
and  early  youth,  offences  committed  against  property  and 
person  with  a  deliberation  and  a  coolness  hardly  exceeded  by 
the  habitual  criminal,  are,  Dr  Baer  thinks,  often  partly  social, 
partly  pathological  in  their  origin,  and  in  no  wise  absolutely 
inherent  in  child-nature.  Thus  town-life,  where  the  harshness 
and  soul-jarring  character  of  the  struggle  for  existence,  and 
the  sharing  of  young  children  in  the  support  of  the  family  and 
the  household,  develops  precocious  thinking,  and  cunning  and 
astute  employment  of  the  moment  to  their  own  advantage, 
an  abnormally  early  development  of  the  intellectual  side  of 
life,  often  one-sidedly  abnormal,  since  heart  and  feelings  are 
repressed,  neglected,  or  left  undeveloped.  Imitation,  again, 
^  An  English  version  appeared  in  the  Monist  for  October  of  the  same  year. 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   CRIMINAL  361 

is  another  great  factor  in  the  production  of  the  monstrosities 
of  childhood,  and  the  elucidation  and  preservation  of  criminal 
tendencies.  At  the  most,  many  of  the  so-called  '  criminal 
characteristics '  of  children  are  psychopathic  dispositions,  for 
the  further  development  of  which  on  the  way  to  crime  and 
criminal  phenomena  opportunity  and  social  milieu  are  the 
chief  breeding-grounds.  Altogether,  Baer  holds  a  much  more 
favourable  opinion  of  the  child  than  do  many  more  recent 
writers,  even  those  who  are  not  committed  to  the  Lombrosan 
theory,  granting  his  imperfect  moral  development  but  seeing 
no  reason  to  denominate  him  a  habitual  criminal  in  embryo, 
his  so-called  '  degenerative  signs '  being  perfectly  susceptible 
of  other  explanations. 

Dr  Hannes  Gross,  a  jurist  and  the  author  of  an  encyclo- 
pa;dic  work  on  criminal  psychology'  (251),  although  almost 
a  partisan  of  Lombroso  in  some  of  his  views  about  woman, 
takes  the  idea  of  the  naivete  of  childhood  to  heart.  For  him, 
children  stand  out  in  contrast  to  adults  by  reason  of  their 
'  uncorrupted  nature  ' ;  they  are  more  upright  and  honest,  and 
it  is  contact  with  the  '  stupidity  '  of  adults  that  spoils  children 
and  breeds  criminals. 

Havelock  Ellis  (1S4,  p.  211)  notes  the  precocity  of  crime 
in  children  (even  expert  professional  criminals  being  produced, 
in  India  especially,  before  they  are  out  of  childhood's  years), 
and  the  existence  of  '  a  certain  form  of  criminality  almost 
peculiar  to  children,  a  form  to  which  the  term  "  moral  insanity  " 
may  very  fairly  be  ascribed.'  This  'moral  insanity,'  which, 
often  in  combination  with  intellectual  precocity,  makes  itself 
manifest  between  the  ages  of  five  and  eleven,  and  is  'character- 
ised by  a  certain  eccentricity  of  character,  a  dislike  of  family 
habits,  an  incapacity  for  education,  a  tendency  to  lying, 
together  with  astuteness  and  extraordinary  cynicism,  bad 
sexual  habits,  and  cruelty  towards  animals  and  companions.' 
Moreover,  '  these  characters  are  but  an  exaggeration  of  the 
characters  which,  in  a  less  degree,  mark  nearly  all  children,' 
thinks  Mr  Ellis,  for  '  the  child  is  naturally,  by  his  organisation, 
nearer  to  the  animal,  to  the  savage,  to  the  criminal,  than  the 
adult,' and  'the  charm  of  childhood  for  those  who  are  not 
children  lies  largely  in  these  qualities  of  frank  egotism  and 
reckless  obedience  to  impulse.'  Thus  it  happens_  that  '  the 
criminal  is  an  individual  who,  to  some  extent,  remains  a  child 
his  life  long — a  child  of  larger  growth  and  with  greater  capacity 


362  THE   CHILD 

for  evil.'  The  adult  criminal,  in  spite  of  the  rarity  of  mental 
acuteness  (which  often  marks  young  criminals),  resembles  chil- 
dren in  many  ways,  impulsiveness,  light-heartedness,  easy-going 
character,  etc.  Even  the  convict,  according  to  DostoiefTsky, 
is  '  a  child.' 

Compayr^,  in  his  study  of  the  intellectual  and  moral 
development  of  the  child  (123,  p.  303),  considers  as  radically 
false  the  idea  of  the  purity  and  innocence  of  childhood  so 
beautifully  spoken  of  by  About  and  Bernardin  de  Saint-Pierre, 
as  well  as  the  idea  of  those  like  Saint  Augustine,  who  looked 
upon  children  as  '  born  for  damnation.'  Man,  not  being 
naturally  a  moral  being,  he  only  becomes  so  gradually,  and 
the  child  can  start  with  no  approach  to  perfect  morality,  for 
in  reality  the  child  does  naturally  bad  or  good,  and  neither  a 
panegyric  nor  an  anathema  of  childhood  is  in  order.  To  be 
fair,  also,  one  must  study  the  child  under  favourable  circum- 
stances and  normal  conditions,  and  having  done  so  one  sees 
that  '  the  qualities  of  the  child  are  often  only  the  reflection  of 
its  parents,  that  child-character  is,  so  to  speak,  a  work  written 
in  collaboration,  where  it  is  hard  to  discover  which  parts  really 
belong  to  each  of  the  collaborators,  nature  and  education.' 
What  Legouve  has  said  of  stealing  :  '  The  child  has  not  the 
instinct  of  theft ;  he  lacks  the  instinct  of  other  people's  pro- 
perty,' is  one  of  many  epigrams  that  are  not  without  some 
truth. 

Faults  of  Childhood. — Compayrd  (123,  p.  306)  points  out 
that  it  was  'a  bachelor  and  a  bishop  who  drew  up  most 
cleverly  the  indictment  of  the  faults  of  childhood.'  La 
Bruyere,  in  his  chapter  on  '  Man,'  written  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  declared :  '  Children  are  haughty,  disdainful,  angry, 
envious,  curious,  interested,  idle,  fickle,  timid,  intemperate, 
lying,  given  to  dissimulation ;  .  .  .  .  they  do  not  like  to 
suffer  ill,  but  love  to  inflict  it :  they  are  already  men.' 
Dupanloup,  bishop  of  Orleans,  in  the  nineteenth  century, 
whose  book  on  the  '  Child '  has  been  translated  into  English, 
is,  naturally,  theologically-minded,  and  for  him,  as  for  St 
Augustine,  'childhood  fairly  pullulates  with  the  beginnings 
of  sins.' 

So  far  as  science  is  concerned,  however,  it  is  in  Germany 
that  the  '  faults '  and  '  defects '  of  childhood  have,  apart  from 
the  Lombrosan  school,  received  most  attention.  Emminghaus' 
'Psychical  Disturbances  in  Childhood'  (191),    published  in 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   CRIMINAL  363 

1887,  was  followed  by  Siegert's  'Problematic  Child-Natures' 
(595)  in  1889,  Strumpell's  'Pedagogical  Pathology'  (619)  in 
1890,  Scholz's  'Character  Defects  of  the  Child'  (579)  in  1891, 
Kozle's  '  Pedagogical  Pathology  in  the  Education  of  the 
Nineteenth  Century'  (333)  in  1893,  and  other  books  and 
pamphlets  of  kindred  sort,  while,  since  1896,  a  journal 
bearing  the  title  Kiftderfehler  has  been  published  at  Langen- 
salza  under  the  direction  of  Professor  Chr.  Ufer. 

Child-types. — Siegert  (595,  p.  76),  the  text  of  whose  essay  is 
'  do  not  wantonly  and  forcibly  destroy  the  forms  of  nature,  do 
not  burst  rudely  and  destructively  in  upon  the  problematic 
child-natures  that  are  developing  according  to  their  own  laws,' 
sketches  briefly  fifteen  types  of  children,  viz.,  melancholy, 
angel  or  devil,  star-gazer,  scatter-brain,  apathetic,  misanthropic, 
doubter  and  seeker,  honourable,  critical,  eccentric,  stupid, 
buffoonly-««}'x'^,  with  feeble  memory,  studious  and  blase. 
These  classes  together,  according  to  Siegert,  constitute  some 
8  per  cent,  of  all  children,  and  teachers  and  the  school-system 
are  often  responsible  for  their  complete  wreck  or  ruin,  to  say 
nothing  of  parents.  Individual  treatment  here  is  the  only 
means  of  change  or  salvation,  and  force  is  worse  than  nothing 
at  all. 

Striimpell  has  gathered  together  from  adults  (educated  and 
ignorant),  teachers  and  others  having  to  do  with  children, 
some  300  terms  descriptive  of  their  faults  and  defects,  with 
notes  on  their  synonymy,  application,  classification,  their 
importance,  distribution  according  to  age,  sex,  etc.,  and  place 
of  origin  in  the  organism.  The  dialect  dictionaries  would  cer- 
tainly have  furnished  the  author  hundreds  more  epithets,  at 
the  very  least,  many  of  them  much  more  picturesque  than  any 
in  his  list,  but  the  number  of  such  is  almost  endless,  as  under 
favourable  circumstances  language  can  name  almost  any 
peculiarity  of  the  child,  and  child-types  judged  by  these 
marks  are  as  innumerable.  And  so  many  of  these  defects 
and  faults  belong  to  adults  as  well,  that  their  characterisation 
as  child-faults,  because  in  childhood  by  stress  of  environment 
and  surrounding  they  so  often  appear  in  exaggerated  form, 
is  very  frequently  altogether  unjustifiable.  ISIoreover,  their 
importance  as  'faults'  is  further  impaired  by  the  fact  that  the 
child  plays  with  them  as  he  does  with  everything  else  his  mind 
is  at  all  seized  of,  as  is  well  shown  by  Groos  in  his  '  Plays  of 
Man.'     The  school  of  the  'pedagogical  pathologists'  has  over- 


364  THE   CHILD 

estimated  the  value  and  importance  of  many  of  these  'defects,' 
the  coining  of  names  for  which  by  adults  is  more  dangerous  as 
metaphysics  than  the  child's  simple  vagary  usually  is  or  need 
be.  And  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  it  is  the  working,  think- 
ing adult  who,  all  the  time,  is  thus  'sizing  up,'  so  to  speak,  the 
playing,  dreaming  child,  whose  flashes  of  wisdom  or  unwisdom 
are  all  too  often  writ  large  by  nurse,  parent,  friend,  or  teacher. 
Still  Striimpell  is  more  optimistic  than  other  writers,  and  be- 
lieves that  the  developmental  capacity  of  the  intellect  is  so 
strong  that  few  defects  of  the  kind  under  discussion  are  utterly 
incurable. 

For  Scholz  (579,  p.  15),  'every  child  is,  pedagogically 
speaking,  to  be  considered  mentally  sound,  that  possesses  a 
capacity  of  development  favourable  to  the  purposes  of  educa- 
tion in  character  and  understanding.'  The  'faults  of  char- 
acter '  he  classifies  according  to  the  province  of  the  psychic  life 
in  which  they  originate  :  i.  Faults  of  feeling  and  sensation, — 
here  belong  the  melancholy,  the  sensitive,  the  capricious,  the 
timid,  the  perplexed,  the  haughty,  the  proud,  the  stubborn,  the 
vain,  the  saucy,  the  indolent,  the  easily  moved,  romantic,  the 
mischievous  child.  2.  Faults  in  the  realm  of  ideas, — here  belong 
the  stupid,  the  distracted,  the  volatile,  the  sluggish-minded, 
the  precocious,  the  fanciful  and  fanciless,  the  curious  and  the 
secretive,  the  disorderly,  the  uncleanly  and  the  pedantic  child. 
3.  Faults  of  willing  and  acting, — here  belong  the  restless,  the 
awkward,  the  silly,  the  covetous,  the  collecting,  the  deceitful 
and  the  thievish,  the  disagreeable,  the  envious,  the  malicious, 
the  cruel,  the  unchaste,  the  destructive,  and  the  lying  child. 
In  all  these  matters  it  is  important  to  know  '  whether  the  fault 
arises  from  defect  or  from  excess,  for  it  is  easier  to  abolish 
than  to  build  anew.' 

Dr  P.  Lesshaft  (355,  p.  t6),  who  has  paid  special  attention 
to  the  education  of  the  child  in  the  family,  recognises  six  very 
marked  types  among  the  children  who  enter  school,  viz.,  the 
hypocritical,  the  ambitious,  the  quiet,  the  effeminate-stupid, 
the  bad-stupid,  the  depressed.  Upon  the  entrance  of  these 
several  types  into  the  new  environment  of  the  school  one  sees 
the  force  of  heredity  and  family-;;////Vz^  with  which  the  teacher 
has  to  contend.  All  through  life,  if  the  early  type  be  main- 
tained, the  hypocritical  is  under  the  influence  of  the  diverse 
forms  of  lying  and  deceit,  the  ambitious  controlled  by  the  idea 
of  superiority  or  greatness,  the  quiet  by  the  forms  of  truth,  the 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   CRIMINAL  365 

Other  types  by  pressure  of  circumstances.  All  these  types  may 
appear  very  early  in  the  child's  life.  That,  even  in  the  child, 
individual  character  is  'a  particular  combination  of  diverse 
characteristics,'  and  not  the  excessively  simple  thing  we  are 
prone  sometimes  to  imagine  it,  normally  and  abnormally,  is 
clear  from  the  investigations  of  Vitali  (668,  p.  94)  on  the 
temperaments,  feelings  and  tendencies  of  Italian  school-boys 
and  school-girls  of  the  Romagna,  the  researches  of  Riccardi  as 
to  the  distribution  of  self-love,  ambition,  pride,  vanity,  atten- 
tion, studiousness,  etc.,  among  school  children  in  Bologna  and 
Modena;  of  Marro  (404,  p.  46)  as  to  good,  bad  and  medium 
conduct  among  the  pupils  in  the  gymnasiums  and  lyceums  of 
Italian  cities;  of  Professor  Sergi  (585)  and  others  concerning 
the  '  sense  of  order '  in  the  school  children  of  Arona,  Samarate 
and  other  Italian  cities;  of  Anfosso  (13,  p.  141)  concerning 
honesty  in  school  children,  etc. 

While  Riccardi  notes  that  the  years  11-15  seem  to  bring 
with  them  a  decrease  in  some  of  the  good  qualities  (studious- 
ness and  attention,  e.g.),  and  the  child  becomes  less  docile  as 
regards  the  school  and  the  teacher,  it  is  interesting  to  find 
Professor  G.  B.  Dal  Lago,  of  Taranto,  expressing  himself  as 
follows,  in  connection  with  the  investigations  of  Professor 
Marro  (404,  p.  49):  'Up  to  11  or  12  years  children  have, 
generally,  no  natural  bent  (indole) ;  they  rarely  manifest 
personality,  but  like  to  be  ruled,  directed  and  corrected. 
Between  the  ages  of  13  and  15  inclinations  appear,  and  this 
period  is  the  most  dangerous.  Animality  and  sensual  wants 
manifest  themselves,  and  reason  is  not  sufficiently  developed 
to  act  efficaciously  as  a  check  upon  the  instincts  that  pursue 
them.  But  after  the  fifteenth  year  the  case  is  different,  youths 
can  be  reasoned  with,  and,  if  natural  talent  aids,  they  are 
almost  always  to  be  saved  by  the  persuasive  word.'  Riccardi 
considers  that  'the  nature  of  female  education,  the  psychic 
character  of  woman,  and  the  greater  educative  plasticity  of 
the  sex,'  count  for  not  a  little  in  the  more  favourable  showing 
girls  make  under  the  circumstances  in  question.  It  is  often 
observed  that  with  the  best  pupils  the  sex-differences  are 
slight,  the  poor  and  bad  pupils  frequently  showing  the  marked 
diversities. 

Misoneism. — In  an  interesting  article  on  the  nature  and 
causes  of  political  crime,  Lombroso  has  given  utterance  to  the 
view  that  a  law  of  inertia,  which  he  calls  misoneism  ('  hatred  of 


^66  TIIK    CHILD 

the  new,'  neophobia)^  governs  the  moral  world.  I^verywhere 
he  finds  misoiteism,  it  dominates  in  all  ages,  and  among  all 
peoples ;  langiuv^e,  institutions,  customs,  laws,  all  human 
thoughts  and  actions,  like  those  of  children  and  animals,  can 
be  explained  only  on  the  ground  of  constitutional  tnisoneism. 
Misoneism  is  a  physiological  characteristic  of  humanity — 
philoneism  or  ncophily  ('the  love  of  the  new'),  something 
pathological  in  the  individual.  Men  must  perforce  crush  or 
destroy  him  whose  message  is,  '  Behold,  I  make  all  things 
new  ! ' 

'I'o  this  idea  Lomhroso  returns  in  a  later  essay,  a  pessi- 
mistic review  of  the  achievements  of  psychiatry.  Of  the  great 
mass  of  men  in  the  world,  he  tells  us,  it  may  be  said  fni:^cs 
consumcre  nali ;  they  are  the  slaves  of  habits,  words,  sounds, 
even  to  these  they  sacrifice  ideas  and  oppose  research,  dis- 
covery, truth,  science.  For  this  reason  '  we  live  in  the  false, 
for  the  false,  with  the  false ;  the  true  is  only  met  with  excep- 
tionally in  the  world.'  Sacrifice  and  suffering  are  the  con- 
comitants of  all  progress.  Woman  is  subjugated  and  trained 
in  deceit,  the  child  is  intimidated  and  schooled  into  con- 
servatism. 

M.  S.  Merlino,  in  his  criticism  of  Lombroso's  misoneistic 
philosophy,  i)oints  out  the  fact  that  neo[)hi]y  and  neophobia 
are  of  necessity  relative  terms,  being  but  the  oscillations  of  the 
pendulum  of  progress  ;  they  are  derived  phenomena,  functions 
of  the  law  of  man's  adaptation  to  his  environment.  In  other 
words :  '  Man  is  neither  neophobic  nor  neophile  by  nature ; 
from  necessity  he  may  be  either.'  The  condition  of  progress, 
however,  seems  to  be  maintained  by  the  preponderance  of 
neophily  over  misoneism.  Moreover,  children  and  savages 
are  not  characteristically  neophobic.  If  children  have  one 
peculiar  capacity  it  is  that  of  extr'msccation,  '  that  tendency  to 
get  out  of  themselves,  to  go  beyond  themselves,  which  the 
Germans  call  Selbst-Entfremdiing,  in  English  self-estrangement.'' 
When  they  are  not  overwhelmed  with  rules,  formulae  and 
methods,  children,  as  their  history  in  all  ages  and  among  all 
peoples  shows,  can  learn  almost  anything,  their  power  of 
imitation  is  almost  infinite.  As  M.  Merlino  says,  Lombroso 
forgets  '  the  insatiable  curiosity  of  children,  their  charming  im- 
portunity, their  gracious  prattle,  the  continual  motion  to  which 
they  give  themselves  up,  to  exercise  at  one  and  the  same  time 
their  muscles  and  their  thought,  all  their  faculties  and  senses.' 


THE   CHILD   AND   TPIE   CRDHNAL  -i^^J 

Savages,  like  children,  are  'curious  and  impressionable.' 
Lombroso,  in  his  account  of  them,  fails  to  note  '  the  penetra- 
tion of  their  minds,  their  facility  in  learning  languages,  their 
love  of  novelties  (remarked  by  ancient  and  modern  travellers 
and  observers),  their  admiration  at  objects  of  foreign  manu- 
facture. 

William  Ellis  tells  us  that,  even  in  the  case  of  fire-arms 
(with  whose  deadly  nature  they  were  not  unacquainted),  fear 
was  overcome  by  curiosity  in  the  Tahitians.  Cardinal 
Massaja,  who  was  for  thirty-five  years  a  missionary  in  Ethiopia, 
tells  of  the  eagerness  with  which  the  natives  sought  to  be 
vaccinated,  and  Marsden  reports  a  native  of  Sumatra  as  saying 
as  he  inspected  a  European  clock  :  '  Are  we  not  justly  the 
slaves  of  a  people  able  to  invent  and  to  construct  so  wonderful 
a  mechanism.'  Where  they  have  not  suffered  from  the  in- 
justice and  cruelty  of  the  higher  races  primitive  peoples  are 
rather  inclined  to  welcome  the  white  man,  being  no  more 
afraid  of  him  than  the  birds  and  beasts,  who  have  not  yet 
learned  to  flee  before  him.  The  women,  too,  of  the  uncivil- 
ised races,  far  from  being  more  misoneistic,  as  Lombroso 
supposes,  are  often  the  first  to  welcome  the  stranger. 

But  all  over  the  world  there  are  neophiles  and  neophobes ; 
men,  women  and  children,  savage  or  civilised,  may  be 
neophile  in  one  thing,  neophobic  in  another — hkes  and 
dislikes  are  older  than  the  race  itself.  Even  Lombroso,  as 
Merlino  wittily  says,  is  'neophile  in  anthropology,  but  neo- 
phobic in  sociology.'  Even  amid  the  beginnings  of  human 
gregariousness,  to  say  nothing  of  the  complexities  and  multi- 
farious phenomena  of  the  social  Diilieii  of  to-day,  the  individual 
instinct  and  reason  (seen  at  work  in  every  growing  child) 
exclude  Lombroso's  sweeping  generalities.  Very  often,  too,  it 
is  a  question  not  of  an  inherited  tendency  or  quality,  but  of 
an  acquired  effect — 'the  methods  of  education  and  of  civil- 
isation have  created  the  neophobes.'  Neither  the  truancy  of 
the  child,  nor  the  return  of  the  educated  savage  to  his  original 
nakedness  and  forest  shelter,  is  in  itself  a  convincing  proof  of 
neophobia.  In  his  self-chosen  occupation  the  boy,  and  at 
home  with  his  family  in  the  forest  the  savage,  gives  abundant 
evidences  of  neophile  tendencies  both  in  thought  and  speech 
and  deed. 

The  Criminal  Child. — The  criminal  child  has  been  best 
studied  by  Ferriani,  whose   volume   contains   statistical  and 


368  THE  CHILD 

theoretical  data  of  all  sorts  relating  to  juvenile  crimes  and 
offences.  The  author  holds  that,  '  with  few,  few  exceptions,  the 
criminal  carries  the  germ  of  his  criminality  with  him  out  of 
his  childhood'  (202,  p.  5);  the  thorough  study  of  the  child 
must  reveal  the  source  of  most,  if  not  of  all,  crime.  Of  all 
factors  in  the  production  of  crime  the  greatest  are  criminal 
environment,  had  parents,  bad  homes,  bad  food,  bad  com- 
panions, bad  books,  bad  conversation,  etc.  Lack  of  shame, 
selfishness,  vanity,  cruelty,  lying,  jealousy,  envy,  gluttony, 
anger,  hate,  idleness,  vagabondage,  self-abuse,  prostitution, 
excessive  work,  carelessness,  and  bad  example  of  the  well- 
to-do  classes,  illegitimate  parentage,  suggestion,  imitation, 
heredity,  alcoholism,  imbecility,  are  other  powerful  stimulants 
or  causes  of  crime,  which  vary  much  with  epoch,  climate,  race, 
sex,  age,  individual. 

The  trinity  of  criminality,  according  to  Ferriani,  consists 
of  'the  inherited  tendency  to  crime,  alcoholism  and  idiocy,' 
from  whose  sway  society  is  all  too  slow  to  rescue  the  growing 
child.  The  general  belief  that  girls  resemble  bodily  the  father, 
boys  the  mother,  may  account  for  the  fact  that  girls  are  dearer 
to  the  father,  boys  to  the  mother.  Passions  and  criminal 
tendencies  are  as  inheritable  as  any  somatic  characteristics. 
Ferriani  cites  with  some  approval  the  declaration  of  Ferri : 
*  Men  from  the  lowest  and  most  anti-social  strata  are  criminals 
from  innate,  irremediable  tendencies.' 

Among  the  factors  for  which  the  child  is  in  some  sense 
himself  responsible,  gluttony  and  vanity  are  prominent,  the 
one  inciting  to  minor,  the  other  to  greater  offences.  Gluttony 
is,  in  some  respects,  the  cardinal  sin  of  childhood,  and  is 
a  fertile  mother  of  theft.  Even  among  well-to-do  school 
children  this  tendency  breaks  out.  Here  again,  however,  girls 
steal  less  frequently  than  boys.  Ferriani  gives  the  following 
figures  from  a  boys'  school  and  a  girls'  school  for  the  period 
1889-1892: 

Out  of  512  boys  209  were  gluttonous — thefts,  62. 

Out  of  287  girls  124  were  gluttonous — thefts,  26. 

Vanity  and  boasting  often  play  a  very  considerable  role  in 
the  production  of  juvenile  crime.  Maironi  observes  :  '  It  is 
certain  that  to  many  youths  the  wish  to  make  sport  of  justice, 
and  to  compel  the  authorities  to  busy  themselves  with  them, 
leads  by  way  of  boasting  to  an  irresistible  tendency  to  evil-doing.' 

Out  of  150   minor  criminals  Ferriani  found   that   15  were 


THE  CHILD  AND   THE   CRIMINAL 


369 


repentant,  48  indifferent,  70  boastful  and  pleased  at  publicity, 
while  17  despised  justice  (202,  p.  27). 

Idleness. — The  proverb,  '  Idleness  is  the  father  of  all  crimes,' 
is,  according  to  Ferriani  (202,  pp.  144-155),  peculiarly  appli- 
cable to  childhood,  for  whicli  idleness  has  native  charms. 
Moreau  says  that  '  idleness  and  vagabondage  are  almost  always, 
with  children,  the  source  of  crime.'  Children  do  not  need  a 
prison  so  much  as  an  occupation;  and  Corre  holds  that 
'  crime,  like  prostitution,  is  nourished  by  idleness.'  The  fol- 
lowing table  gives  the  figures  as  to  idleness  concerning  2000 
minor  criminals  studied  by  Ferriani : — 


A„„                    Altogether 
•^S^-                  j       Idle. 

Half-Idle. 

Active,  but 
not  fond 
of  Work. 

Like          Like  Work 
i.T    1         from  Fear  of 
^^°''''-       Punishment. 

8-10  years  .     . 
10-14      ,,     .     . 
14-18      ,,     .     . 
18-20      ,,     .     . 

217 
380 
283 
232 

100 

75 
195 

15 

25 
40 

152 

3 
12 

20 
44 

19 
8 

4 
I 

Total     .     .          1 1 12 

545 

232 

79 

32 

Out  of  20C0  young  criminals,  1112  were  completely  idle, 
with  a  maximum  of  idleness  at  the  age  of  eight  to  ten  years. 
Even  more  significant  is  Ferriani's  report  of  his  personal  inves- 
tigation of  145  criminal  girls  and  225  criminal  boys  as  to  the 
reason  of  their  idleness  : — 


Answers  of  Girls      .         .         .   145 

We  are  good  for  nothing  .  .14 
Work  is  wearisome  .  .  -15 
Our  mother  does  not  work  .  10 
Our  father  is  a  beggar  .  .12 
We   will   work    when   we    are 

♦big' 6 

Begging   is  nicer,  for  one  can 

walk  about  at  the  same  time.  15 
We   eat  little,  why  should  we 

overexert  ourselves  ?  .  .7 
When  at  work  one   cannot  run 

about  .....  9 
Even  begging  costs  effort  ,     22 

Work  and  earn  almost  nothing .       6 


Answers  of  Boys      .         .  .  225 

We  are  good  for  nothing  .  .     48 

Work  is  hard  .         .         ,  .22 

Our  father  does  not  work  .     25 

One  must  not  always  work  .       6 

Begging  is  work       .         .  .14 

Our  parents  tell  us  that  only  the 

stupid  work  .         .  .19 


We  run  round  all  day  (to  beg), 

and  have  no  time  to  work     .       8 
One  earns  more  by  stealing       .     10 


3/0 


THE   CHILD 


Answers  of  Girls      .         .         .  145 

There  are  soup-kitchens   .         .  4 
We  have  worked  loo  much  ;   we 

arc  tired        ....  7 

Doing  nothing  is  so  fine  .         .  iS 


Answers  of  Boys      ...         .  225 

Beggars  live  well      .         .         •     36 
We  were  dismissed  by  the  mas- 
ter, why  should  we  work  ?     .     18 
Doing    nothing    is  a   constant 
pleasure        .         .         .         '19 

Prostiiution. — The  statement  of  Lombroso  and  Ferrero 
that  'crime  and  prostitution  are  the  two  forms,  mascuHne  and 
feminine,  of  criminality '  has  been  disputed  by  Ferriani,  who 
holds,  with  Florian,  that,  anthropologically  considered,  prosti- 
tution stands  with  male  crime,  but  not  psychologically :  '  The 
criminal  is  driven  to  the  deed  by  anti-social  tendencies,  by 
egoism ;  the  woman  is  often  impelled  by  hunger,  by  the 
poverty  in  which  she  lives,  with  no  one  to  support  her  or  to 
lead  her  among  the  thousand  temptations  which  surround  her, 
to  become  a  prostitute.'  'Once  a  thief  always  a  thief '  runs 
the  proverb,  but  disgust  at  her  trade  often  overtakes  the  prosti- 
tute ;  men  and  women  pity  a  prostitute,  but  hate  a  murderer. 
Bad  example  and  bad  surroundings,  as  Sighele  and  others  have 
well  shown,  are  the  fertile  creators  of  prostitution.  There  were 
in  1881,  in  Italy,  10,422  inscribed  prostitutes  (aged  17-20  years, 
2953  ;  20-30  years,  5456 ;  30-40  years,  1588  ;  over  40  years  of 
age,  425).  Of  these  8393  were  unmarried,  1358  married,  and 
671  widows.  The  reasons  given  by  themselves  for  taking  up 
the  prostitute's  trade  were  as  follows  (202,  pp.  160-165) : — 


Seduction  by  lover  ..... 
Seduction  by  employer  .... 
Abandonment  by  husband,  'parents,'  or  other  members  of 

family  ...... 

Loss  of  husband, '  parents,'  or  other  supporter  of  the  family 

or  from  poverty  .... 

Support  of  children,  '  parents,'  or  other  poor  or  sick  mem 

bers  of  family  ..... 
Instigation  or  depravity  on  the  part  of 'parents,'  husband 

or  other  persons  of  the  family  . 
Instigation  of  lover,  or  other  person  apart  from  the  family 
Crime  or  depravity  .... 

Luxury  ...... 


1653 
927 

794 

2139 

393 

400 
666 

2752 
698 


'  I  never  despair  of  youths  who  honour  their  mother,'  says 
Ferriani  (202,  p.  202),  and  it  is  'children  of  unknown  parentage 
— Garofalo  maintains  that  nine  out  of  every  ten  such  are  ille- 
gitimate— that  go  to  swell  the  population  of  jail  and  prison.' 
The  following  table  shows  the  attraction  which  criminality  has 
for  such  children :— 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   CRIMINAL 


J/ 


Social  Condition. 

Number  of 
Persons. 

Relation  to 
Crime. 

Of  legitimate  birth 
Of  illegitimate  birth 
Of  unknown  parentage  . 

200 
200 
200 

1% 
2i% 

Among  3000  minor  criminals,  Ferriani  found  162  cases  of 
unknown,  and  loi  of  illegitimate  parentage. 

Suggesfiofi  a)id  Imitation. — Suggestion  and  imitation,  moral 
infection  and  contamination,  are  very  powerful  factors  in  the 
production  of  juvenile  crime.  In  politics,  especially  in  demo- 
cracies, the  evil  results  of  the  ever-recurring  statement  'you 
would  have  done  just  the  same  thing  had  you  been  in  my 
(or  his)  place'  are  patent,  and  the  politician's  excuse  is  the 
criminal's,  with  the  same  end,  the  dulling  of  resistance  to 
unrighteousness  and  crime.  The  offences  of  such  children  as 
have  continually  only  bad  examples  before  them  are  largely 
due  to  imitation,  and  the  case  is  much  worse  if  it  be  true  that 
the  child  has  a  natural  tendency  towards  the  bad.  Sighele 
shows  the  influence  of  a  single  criminal  in  a  group  of  two  or  more 
individuals,  and  the  criminal  leaders  of  groups  of  boys  figure 
in  all  records  of  the  darker  side  of  city  life  ;  often  a  boy,  but  a 
year  or  two  older  than  the  rest,  is  '  the  secret  soul,  insinuator, 
and  leader  of  the  whole  undertaking.' 

Sighele,  from  whose  studies  Le  Bon  and  Tarde  seem  to 
have  borrowed  not  a  little,  or  at  least  sought  and  found 
inspiration,  considers  that  'suggestion  is  one  of  the  principal 
factors  in  criminal  association,  if,  indeed,  it  is  not  the  unique 
factor'  (598,  p.  19).  The  criminal  couple  is  the  criminal  crowd 
reduced  to  its  simplest  terms  (double  suicides,  double  lunacies, 
assassinations  and  other  crimes  for  love,  etc.),  unless  we  admit 
here  the  obsessions,  succubi  and  self- struggles  of  weak  and 
degenerate  personalities.  In  love,  suicide  comes  first,  then 
homicide,  and  with  primitive  peoples  much  the  same  state  of 
affairs  seems  to  exist. 

In  all  Italy  from  1880  to  1885  there  were  convicted  of 
crimes  against  person  and  property  35,362  individuals,  of 
whom  4825  were  under  21  years  of  age,  1505  under  18,  and  39 
not  yet  14,  and  for  petty  offences  the  record  is  much  worse. 
Conti  attributes  this  juvenile  depravity  to  the  influence  of  three 

25 


372  TIIK   CHILD 

factors — the  natural,  the  social,  the  individual — which  practically, 
however,  reduce  themselves  to  two — heredity  and  family — the 
vast  importance  of  which  is  emphasised  by  his  detailed  study 
of  150  children  (average  age  15-19)  in  the  Royal  Institution 
for  Juvenile  Offenders  at  Bologna.  The  majority  of  these 
children  were  imprisoned  for  vagabondage  or  paternal  correc- 
tion, only  37  cases  of  real  crime  being  noted,  though  un- 
natural offences  and  masturbation  were  very  common.  The 
absence  of  argot  and  the  infrequency  of  tattooing  (three 
cases  only,  religious  symbols  on  the  fore-arm)  are  striking. 
Another  interesting  fact  is  that  27  per  cent,  belonged  to  some- 
what numerous  families,  and  10  per  cent,  were  born  of  parents 
who  had  been  twice  married.  Of  defectives  there  were  among 
the  150  a  hunchback,  a  deaf-mute,  a  cretin,  2  epileptics,  2 
cripples,  3  afflicted  with  seminal  losses,  5  scurvy,  and  6 
idiots. 

Setti,  who  deals  with  the  crime  of  Bologna  in  1887 — of  957 
minors  accused,  about  two-thirds  had  parents,  and  the  boys 
were  five  times  as  numerous  as  the  girls — found  that  vaga- 
bondage was  the  chief  offence,  and  that  education  is  but  an 
insufficient  defence  against  the  three  great  factors  of  juvenile 
crime — abandonment,  poverty,  example.  From  vagabondage 
to  theft  is  but  a  step,  and  the  steps  after  that  are  easier  still. 
Family  and  milieu  account  for  very  much — at  home,  poverty, 
sickness,  alcoholism;  in  the  street,  corruption  of  all  sorts.  The 
child  begins  to  roam  about  and  falls  into  ways  of  evils  he  is 
utterly  unable  to  resist.  The  Italian  statistics  generally  speak 
eloquently  in  favour  of  the  great  power  of  the  home-surround- 
ings and  right  suggestion  in  the  prevention  of  crime  and 
criminals.^  Suggestion,  if  we  believe  Professor  W.  von  Bech- 
terew,  who  has  written  of  its  role  in  social  life,  is  by  no 
means  correlated  with  the  degree  of  intellectual  development 
of  the  subject.  Much  in  the  life  of  the  adult  must  un- 
doubtedly spring  from  the  suggestion-influence  experienced 
in  early  childhood. 

Nature  of  Youthful  Crime. — The  field  of  youthful  crime  is, 
in  certain  respects,  quite  limited.  Ferriani  observes :  '  The 
principal  forms  of  youthful  crime  are  two — theft  and  wounding 
(or  killing) — with  a  strong  preponderance  of  the  first,  for,  inde- 
pendent of  all  other  considerations,  the  child  making  his  first 
criminal  steps  begins  ninety  times  out  of  a  hundred  with  theft ' 
1  Arch,  de  V Anthr.  Crini.,  III.  368. 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   CRIMINAL  373 

(202,  p.  245).  Indeed,  it  may  be  said  that  'from  eight  to  four- 
teen years  the  child  is  almost  always  a  thief,'  and  from  fourteen 
to  the  close  of  childhood's  minority  the  thieving  still  predominates, 
though  woundings,  etc.,  now  occur  frequently.'  But  the  par- 
ticular forms  and  expressions  of  child-crime  vary  with  or  are 
metamorphosed  according  to  the  social  environment,  forgery, 
cheating  in  trade,  etc.,  requiring  some  little  education,  or  social 
position,  in  order  to  make  it  possible  for  children  to  indulge  in 
them  to  any  great  or  deliberate  extent.  The  crimes  committed 
by  2000  minor  criminals  studied  by  Ferriani  were  as  follows 
(many  children  figure  several  times  for  different  offences) : — 

Crimes    against    the    person    (killing,     120;     wounding, 

736)      .  .  .  .  .  .  .     I102 

Crimes  against  good  morals  and  family  order  .  .198 

Crimes  against  the  State      .....  4 

Crimes  against  liberty  (disturbances  of  the  peace)  .  .         14 

Crimes  against  freedom  of  work  (strikes)     .  .  .16 

Crimes  against  public  authority  (resistance,  etc.)     .  .         79 

Crimes  against   the   administration  of  justice  (hypocrisy, 

perjury,  slander,  etc.)  .  .  .  .  -63 

Crimes   against   public  order  (conspiracy   and   incitement 

to  crime)  ......         37 

Crimes  against  pubHc  confidence  (forgery,  etc.)       .  .         36 

Crimes  of  public  harm  (arson,  injury  to  public  ways)  .         93 

Crimes     against     property    (theft,     robbery    and     unjust 

appropriation,   1332  ;  receiving  stolen  goods,  301)       .     1751 
Crimes    against   penal    code    and    against    some    special 
laws  (begging,   loi  ;  gambling,  26;  drunkenness,  17, 
etc.)      .  .  .  .  •  .  .442 


3835 


Average  number  of  offences  per  individual,  1. 9175. 


The  statistics  concerning  2000  minor  criminals,  based  upon 
a  dozen  years'  study  and  observation  by  Ferriani,  are  given 
below  in  condensed  form,  and  with  somewhat  different  arrange- 
ment from  that  of  the  author.  They  indicate  at  a  glance  the 
chief  characteristics  and  peculiarities  of  child-crime  in  Italy  : — 

Statistics  concerning  2000  Minor  Italian  Criminals 
(Ferriani). 

Sex— 

Male  .......     1540 

Female        .,,,,,.       460 


374 


THE   CHILD 


Age — 

8- lo  years  ......  35^ 

10-12       ,,  ......  240 

12-14       ,,  ...■••  350 

14-16      ,,  ......  465 

16-20      „  ......  594 

Family — 

Of  bad  reputation    .             .             .  '          .             .             .  7°! 

Completely  depraved           .....  169 

Of  uncertain  repute  .  .  .  .  .53 

Bad  examples           ......  896 

Presence  of  condemned  parents  or  relations              .             .  207 

Complete  misery      .             .           _  .             .             .             .  175^ 

Children  (relapsed)  returned  from  institutions          .             .  1604 

Parents  or  Relatives  Punished  for — 

Murder  and  homicide  (wounding)    .  .  .  .         32 

Cruelty  to  children  .  .  .  .  .41 

Offences  against  morals        .  .  .  .  .38 

Resistance  and  riot  .....         60 

Theft  and  unjust  appropriation         .  .  .  .141 

Fraud  .......         42 

Carrying  dangerous  or  forbidden  weapons  .  .  .       1 12 

Education — 

Able  to  read  and  write         .....     1336 
Had  further  education  .....       325 

Had  higher  instruction         .  .  .  .  .129 

Analphabetic  ......       210 

Natural  Disposition  of  Criminals — 

Altogether  idle         ......     III2 

Half-idle 545 

Active,  but  not  fond  of  work  ....       232 

Fond  of  work  ......         79 

Like  work  from  fear  of  punishment  .  .  .32 

Crimes  against  Person — 

Homicide    .  .  .  .  .  .  .126 

Wounding   .......       73^ 

Cruelty,  slander,  insult         .....       244 

Moral — 

Offences  against  morals,  sexual  immorality,  etc.       .  .       198 

Cruelty  and  Destruction — 

Killing  animals        .  .  .  .  .  .15 

Cruelty  to  animals  .  .  .  .  .  .         17 

Disturbance  of  peace,  insult  to  and  resistance  of  authority  .       251 
Arson  .......         79 

Injury  to  public  and  private  property  ,  ,  ,67 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   CRIMINAL  375 


Theft  and  Fraud — 

Theft  .  .  .  .  . 

Gleaning  on  others'  land 
Robbery      .  .  .  .  . 

Fraud,  extortion,  unjust  appropriation,  etc. 
Receiving  stolen  goods 

Deceit,  Forging,  etc. — 

Shamming  crime      .  .  .  ■ 

.Slander        .  .  .  .  . 

Perjury         .  .  .  .  . 

Counterfeiting  and  forgery  . 

Begging       .  . 

Carrying  forbidden  weapons 
Drunkenness  .  .  .  . 

Miscellaneous  .... 


11S2 

97 
10 

138 
301 

26 

15 
18 

33 

lOI 

45 

15 

188 


Mathieu,  in  his  account  of  the  French  'criminal  child' 
(417),  notes  the  alarming  increase  of  juvenile  crime  in  the  last 
50  or  60  years.  During  the  period  1830-1880  the  number  of 
minors  between  the  ages  of  16  and  21  accused  of  crime  had 
quadru|iled,  while  that  of  adults  has  increased  three-fold ;  in 
1881-1893  the  number  of  child-criminals  increased  ^th  as  com- 
pared with  an  augmentation  of  ^th  for  adult  offenders  ;  the 
amount  of  prostitution  among  minors  seems  to  be  on  rhe 
increase,  amounting  to  40,000  in  the  last  10  years  ;  the  suicides 
of  children  and  youths  have  also  increased,  for  in  1836-1840  the 
number  of  suicides  of  children  under  16  years  of  age  was  19, 
while  during  1881-1894  it  has  increased  from  51  to  75;  the 
number  of  suicides  of  individuals  between  the  ages  of  16  and 
21  has  augmented  from  128  in  1836  to  243  in  1880,  and  450 
in  1894.  The  only  optimistic  sign  in  the  criminal  horizon 
seems  to  be  the  fact  that  the  number  of  young  criminals  for  the 
year  1895  is  30,763,  against  32,317  for  the  previous  year,  a 
slight  oasis  in  the  long  desert  of  increase. 

The  children  of  the  criminal  quarter  of  the  city  of  Lyons, 
in  France,  have  been  made  the  subject  of  a  special  study  by 
Raux.  Only  13  per  cent,  of  these  young  criminals  seem  to 
have  been  bad  in  spite  of  good  influence  and  moral  education, 
the  enormous  role  of  social  and  family  environment  being 
revealed  by  the  fact  that  87  per  cent,  seem  to  have  been  led 
into  crime  through  the  bad  character,  weakness,  cruelty,  in- 
difference, etc.,  of  their  parents,  though  doubtless  many  of 
these  must  have  been  hereditarily  tainted  and  infected.  The 
precocity  of  child-criminals  appears  in  marked  fashion,  76  per 


376 


THE   CHILD 


cent,  being  between  13  and  16,  21  per  cent,  between  10  and 
12,  and  3  per  cent,  even  between  6  and  9  years  of  age.  Of 
the  crimes  charged  19  per  cent,  were  offences  against  the  person 
and  61  per  cent,  against  property.  M.  Raux  notes  that  chil- 
dren whose  offences  are  of  a  very  grave  character  are  in  reahty 
less  vicious  than  'young  habitual  vagabonds.'  In  the  case  of 
the  former,  moral  reformation  is  possible,  but  the  latter,  poisoned 
by  association  with  bad  and  immoral  persons,  have  become 
regular  gallows-birds.  It  is  interesting  to  learn  that  out  of 
100  released,  61  behave  themselves  well,  13  passably  so,  26 
are  lost  sight  of  altogether  (526). 

Pfeifer  states  that  apart  from  the  comparatively  rare  offences 
against  morals,  the  criminality  of  German  school  children  can 
be  classed  under  two  heads,  viz. :  i.  Outbreaks  of  savagery 
and  rudeness  ;  2.  Thieving  of  diverse  kinds.  The  general  in- 
crease of  juvenile  crime  in  Germany,  and  the  relation  in  which 
it  stands  to  the  crime  of  adults,  can  be  seen  from  the  following 
statistics  given  by  Pfeifer  (491) : — 


Out  of  100,000  Persons  a 

ged  12-1 

5  years, 

Out  of  100,000  Persons  aged  15-1 

3  years. 

there  were  sentenced — 

there  were  sentenced — 

Offence 

1883 

i88q 

Offence 

1883 

1SS9 

Setting  fire  . 

2.3 

2-5 

Setting  fire  . 

2.7 

2.2 

Forcible  lewdness 

4.2 

5-5 

Forcible   lewdness 

15-7 

19.8 

Simple  theft 

237-7 

269.3 

Simple  theft 

335-4 

344-2 

Robbery 

.34.6 

42.7 

Robbery 

51-4 

59-6 

Embezzling  . 

13.0 

16.3 

Embezzling  . 

40.2 

43-6 

Robbery 

0.5 

I.O 

Robbery 

1-3 

1-5 

Receiving      stolen 

Receiving     stolen 

goods 

10.2 

16.6 

goods 

16.2 

iS.o 

Fraud  . 

10.3 

14.0 

Fraud  . 

32-7 

42-5 

Forgery 

2.4 

3-4 

Forgery 

9.0 

11.9 

Injury  to  property 

22.0 

26.8 

Injury  to  property 

32.8 

44-5 

In   1889,  of  the  crime  between   12  and  18  years,  the  pro- 
portion between  1 2  and  1 5  years  was  : — 


Se.x. 

General. 

Forcible 
Lewdness. 

Simple 
Theft. 

Robbery. 

Setting 
Fire. 

Male 
Female     . 

36.8 

33-4 

22.0 

42.9 

48.2 
36-6 

43-7 
36-5 

43 
19 

THE   CHILD   AND   THE   CRIMINAL 


377 


It  thus  appears  that  for  both  boys  and  girls  the  most  criminal 
period  is  from  15  to  18  years. 

The  proportion  of  youthful  (12-18  years)  to  adult  individuals 
sentenced  in  1889  for  offences  against  the  imperial  laws  of 
Germany  was  as  follows : — 


All 
Offences. 

Theft. 

Robbery. 

Setting 
tire. 

INIoral 
Offences. 

Embezzle- 
ment. 

Fraud. 

91-5 
9-5 

Adults 
Youth 

90 
10 

79 
21 

75 
25 

68 

32 

78 

22 

89-3 
10.7 

The   conditions    of    juvenile   crime    in    English-speaking 
countries  are  embodied  in  the  work  of  Morrison  on  Juvenile 
Offenders,  published  in  1897.     In  1894,  in  England,  there  were 
26  in  every  100,000  of  the  juvenile  population  under  12  years 
of  age  convicted  of  indictable  offences;  for  the  period  12-16, 
the  proportion  was   261,  for  that  between  the  sixteenth  and 
the  twenty  first  year,  330.     In  New  South  Wales,  in  1890,  the 
number  of  juvenile  offenders  under  20  out  of  the  total  popula- 
tion was  3372;  between  20  and  40  years,  22,174;  aged  40  and 
over,    13,022.      In  England   the   proportionate   frequency  of 
certain   offences   at  the  age  of  16,  and  at  the  age  of  16-21 
years,   is    as    follows :    Violence    against    the   person,    1:2; 
offences   against   morals,    1:3    or  4 ;   burglary,    1:4;   simple 
theft,    1:1.      In    the    year    1890    there   were   23   homicides 
committed  by  children  under   14  years  of  age,  and  388  by 
individuals  between  the  ages  of  15  and  18,  while  the  corre- 
sponding figures  for  England  are  o  and  6  respectively.     In  the 
latter  country  there  were,  in  1893-94,  7  cases  of  manslaughter 
by  individuals  under  16,  and  18  cases  by  individuals  between 
16  and  20.     Of  the  habitual  offenders  under  16  years  of  age 
in  England  in   1890,  85  per  cent,  were  boys  and  15  per  cent, 
girls  (the  proportion  in  the  industrial  schools  was  70  per  cent, 
and  24  per  cent.),  the  corresponding  numbers  in  the  United 
States   being   78   per  cent,   and   22   per  cent.     Of  the   boys 
released  from  the  reform  schools,  79  per  cent,  were  'doing 
well,'  and  of  the  girls  70  per  cent.,  the  corresponding  figures 
for  the  industrial  schools  being  86  per  cent,  and  83  per  cent, 
respectively.      The   inferior   physical   condition    and    greater 
mortality  of  industrial  and  reform  school  children  is  noted  by 
Morrison,  who  also  lays  great  stress  upon  environment  as  a 


378 


THE   CHILD 


factor  in  criminality.  Of  the  children  in  the  reform  schools  in 
1891,  there  were  unable  to  read  or  write  17  per  cent.,  able  to 
read  and  write  imperfectly,  70  per  cent.,  with  an  ordinary 
common  school  education,  13  per  cent. ;  of  the  children  in 
the  industrial  schools  in  1887-91,  2  per  cent,  were  habitual 
criminals,  6  per  cent,  were  deserted  by  their  parents,  20  per 
cent,  dependent  on  the  mother,  14  per  cent,  dependent  on  the 
father,  4  per  cent,  had  neither  father  nor  mother,  and  53  per 
cent,  were  either  partly  or  wholly  orphaned  or  had  criminal 
parents.  In  some  respects  England  and  the  United  States 
seem  to  show  an  improvement  in  the  amount  and  distribution 
of  child-crime — indeed,  England  has  been  looked  to  as  'the 
one  bright  spot '  in  all  the  horizon  of  juvenile  crime.  The 
unbiased  study  of  the  statistics,  however,  does  not  seem  to  be 
as  encouraging  as  many  would  lead  us  to  believe. 

Roussel,  in  his  study  of  orj)han  asylums  and  other  child- 
savin'j;  institutions,  has  tabulated  the  Dunishments  and  their 
cause  per  100  children  during  a  period  of  20  years  (1860- 
1879),  together  with  the  rewards  for  good  conduct  during  the 
same  time;  the  data  are  from  the  two  reform  schools  of 
Ruisselede  and  Beernem  in  Belgium  (404,  p.  58) : — 


Boys. 

Girls. 

Punishments  . 

31- 1 

257 

Rewards 

. 

31-3 

31-7 

Punisl 

iments  due  lo  alicrcaliuns,  elc.     .... 

53-90 

17.4 

„      idleness,  negligence 

1.80 

21.3 

,,     lack  ot  neatness      .... 

10.70 

24.7 

„     unbecoming  speech 

0.41 

14.6 

.,     indecent  acts  and  speech 

1. 00 

0.24 

.,     refusal  to  work       .... 

0.82 

1.26 

„      infractions  of  discipline  . 

19.00 

19.9 

„      theft  and  attempts  to  steal 

9.60 

0.0 

,,     attempts  and  plots  to  desert   . 

1.70 

0.0 

„     desertion         ..... 

0.72 

0.0 

So  far  as  good  conduct  (rewarded)  is  concerned,  girls  and 
boys  appear  to  be  about  on  a  level,  while  of  distinctly  bad 
conduct  (punished)  the  latter  show  a  considerably  larger  pro- 
portion than  the  former,  with  whom  also  the  character  of  the 
offences  leading  to  the  infliction  of  the  correction  was  less 
grave. 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   CRIMINAL  379 

As  Dr  ISIarro  notes,  the  boys  excel  in  active,  positive 
offences,  altercations  and  fights,  thefts,  the  only  active  offence 
in  which  the  girls  notably  surpass  the  boys  being  '  sins  of  the 
tongue.'  The  offences  in  which  the  girls  excel  are  passive  or 
negative  ones,  such  as  idleness,  negligence,  lack  of  cleanliness 
and  neatness,  etc.  (404,  p.  65).  Herein  they  resemble  certain 
primitive  peoples. 

Anfosso,  who  has  made  some  investigations  of  the  sense 
of  honesty  among  Italian  school-children,  comes  to  the  general 
conclusion  (13,  p.  141):  'Honesty  is  altruism.  It  is  not  pro- 
duced completely  new  in  the  child  by  the  influence  of  environ- 
ment, education,  etc.,  but  is  inherited  in  germ  at  least, 
developing  itself  first,  however,  toward  the  fifth  or  sixth  year 
of  life  with  the  co-operation  of  the  outward  world.  As  in  the 
embryo  the  phylogenetic  development  is  repeated  briefly  in 
the  individual,  so  in  childhood  and  youth  the  individual  runs 
through  the  various  stages  through  which  the  race  has  passed 
in  the  progress  from  unlimited  egoism  to  altruism.' 

Here  we  can  trace  the  growth  out  of  that  selfishness  which 
is  the  one  trait  of  childhood  to  that  altruism  which  is,  in  like 
manner,  the  one  trait  of  youth. 

Suicide. — Durkheim,  in  his  recent  study  of  suicide  (181), 
attributes  the  suicides  occurring  among  primitive  peoples  to 
weak  development  of  individuality,  styling  them  altruistic  as 
contrasted  with  egoistical  suicides.  The  parallel  here  is  between 
the  soldier  and  the  primitive  races  of  men,  with  both  of  whom 
the  military  spirit  and  a  kind  of  altruism  are  held  to  dominate. 
But  this  view  is  hardly  tenable. 

Corre,  who  has  written  an  excellent  monograph  on  '  Crime 
and  Suicide,'  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  'insanity  and 
suicide  increase  with  civilisation,'  a  view  entertained  also  by 
Morselli,  and  perhaps  the  great  majority  of  modern  writers  on 
the  subject.  Dr  S.  R.  Steinmetz,  from  a  careful  examination 
of  the  ethnologic  data  concerning  primitive  peoples,  disagrees 
with  the  opinion  that  suicide  is  exceedingly  rare  among  the 
lower  race  of  men,  and  observes :  '  It  seems  probable  .... 
that  there  is  a  greater  propensity  to  suicide  among  savage  than 
among  civilised  peoples,  and  that  its  frequency  may  be  owing 
to  the  generally  more  positive  faith  in  the  future  life  existing  in 
the  former  races,  which  enables  them  to  meet  death  with  greater 
calmness  and  a  slighter  resistance  of  the  instinct  and  other 
natural  motives  tending  to  conservation  of  life,  and  finally  the 


380  THE   CHILD 

question  suggests  itself,  that  if  suicide  is  one  of  the  positive 
symptoms  of  moral  degeneration,  as  Dr  Winkler  suggests,  is 
it  possible  that  moral  degeneration  is  taking  place  among 
the  primitive  peoples?'  (614,  p.  60). 

Dr  Steinmetz's  view,  that  suicide  is  by  no  means  infrequent 
among  primitive  peoples,  is  corroborated  by  the  statement  of 
Col.  Mallery  concerning  the  American  aborigines  (394,  p.  132): 
'  Suicide  is  more  common  among  Indians  than  is  generally 
supposed,  and  even  boys  sometimes  take  their  own  lives.'  A 
Dakota  boy  at  one  of  the  agencies  shot  himself  rather  than 
face  his  companions  after  his  mother  had  whipped  him,  and  a 
Pai-Ute  boy  at  Camp  McDermott,  Nevada,  tried  to  poison 
himself  with  wild  parsnip  because  he  was  not  well  and  strong 
like  the  other  boys.  The  Pai-Utes  usually  eat  the  wild  parsnip 
when  bent  on  suicide.  It  is  interesting  to  find  that  children 
commit  suicide  among  primitive  peoples  often  by  taking 
vegetable  poison  like  women.  Suicides  of  girls  '  because  of 
jealousy,  or  from  fear  of  marriage  to  those  whom  they  do  not 
love,'  is  common  among  the  Dakotas  and  other  Indian  tribes 
(614,  p.  55). 

The  reasons  for  suicide  among  primitive  peoples  are  often 
strikingly  similar  to  those  among  children — fear  of  accusations, 
shame,  disgrace,  threats,  scoldings,  punishment,  disappoint- 
ment, jealousy,  brutal  treatment,  offended  honour,  illness, 
grief,  etc.  Of  49  cases  of  suicide  among  primitive  peoples, 
recorded  by  various  authorities,  Steinmetz  gives  the 
causes  as  follows :  Love,  sorrow  and  related  emotions,  20 ; 
offended  pride  and  sensibility,  13;  fear  of  slavery  and  cap- 
tivity, 5  ;  depression  and  melancholy  (from  sickness,  disap- 
pointment, etc.),  7  ;  family  quarrels,  4. 

Out  of  289  cases  of  suicide  of  school-children  in  Prussia 
during  the  period  1883-1888,  the  chief  causes,  as  given  by 
Scholz  (579,  p.  160),  were  as  follows:  Fear  of  examinations 
and  other  reasons  connected  with  school,  3  (boys  3,  girls  o) ; 
injured  ambition,  19  (boys  18,  girls  i) ;  fear  of  punishment,  70 
(boys  46,  girls  24);  harsh,  undeserved  treatment,  13  (boys  10, 
girls  3)  ;  vexation,  despondency,  etc.,  8  (boys) ;  weariness  of 
life,  7  (boys  6,  girls  i) ;  misfortune  in  love,  5  (boys  4,  girls  i). 

The  saii^^froid  and  premeditation  which,  according  to  M. 
Durand-Fardel  (179),  so  often  characterise  child -suicides 
afford  another  parallel  with  primitive  peoples,  for  with  both  the 
child  and  the  savage  an  overpowering  fear  of  death  is  absent. 


THE  CHILD   AND   THE   CRIMINAL  38 1 

It  is  worth  noting  here  that  Dr  Tautain  ^  reports  that  among 
the  natives  of  the  Marquesas  Islands,  of  Polynesian  stock, 
'suicide  is  almost  confined  to  women,'  vegetable  poison  being 
the  method  employed.  The  reasons  given  for  these  suicides 
are  wounded  amour-propre,  and  a  desire  to  be  avenged  upon 
the  offender,  rather  than  a  wish  to  end  one's  existence. 

According  to  recent  writers  (183,  p.  332),  among  civilised 
peoples  at  least,  women  show  greater  precocity  in  suicide  than 
men,  while  the  great  increase  in  child-suicides,  as  compared 
with  a  century  ago,  may  be  only  a  passing  phase  of  present 
civilisation,  and  not  a  permanent  accompaniment  of  human 
progress  in  evolution — one  that,  like  divorce,  will  ultimately 
normalise  itself  again. 

Lying. — There  are  some  phenomena  of  childhood  that  in 
all  ages  have  found  denouncers,  and  defenders  have  been 
looked  upon  as  quasi-criminal. 

An  old  proverb  (found  in  English — '  Children  and  fools 
cannot  lie';  'Children  and  fools  speak  the  truth' ;  'Children 
and  drunken  people  tell  the  truth.'  German — '  Kinder  und 
Narren  sprechen  die  Wahrheit.'  Greek — 'Children  and  fools 
speak  the  truth ')  declares  tliat  children  are  incapable  of  lying. 
]\Ime.  Necker,  however,  did  not  hesitate  to  say  :  '  Children, 
so  ingenuous,  so  naive,  are  not  always  exactly  true  ;  they 
dissimulate  innocently,  if  one  may  say  so,  and  there  is  in 
them  a  singular  mixture  of  finesse  and  abandon.^  Again  :  '  A 
sort  of  ruse  seems  innate  in  children ;  they  have  learned  to 
avoid  falsity  in  words,  while  they  still  lie  in  actions '  (455,  I. 

P-  ^73)- 

Guyau  declares  that  '  fiction  is  natural  in  children.'     Nay, 

more  :  '  The  He  is  most  often  the  first  exercise  of  the  im- 
agination, the  first  invention,  the  germ  of  art.'  Indeed, 
'  the  lie  is  the  first  childish  romance,  and  its  object  often  is  to 
embellish  reality ;  the  romance  of  the  philosopher,  which  is 
the  metaphysical  hypothesis,  having  ordinarily  the  same  object, 
is  sometimes  the  highest  of  fictions.'  The  same  authority 
modifies  his  opinion  just  a  little  when  he  observes:  'The 
child  is  naturally  inventive,  without  troubling  himself  about 
the  reality  of  what  he  relates,  when  he  is  but  slightly  hypo- 
critical or  dissimulating.  Dissimulation,  which  is  real  lying, 
moral  lying,  is  born  in  children  only  through  fear'  (2  5ga, 
p.  148). 

^  L'Aiiihrop.,  IX.  p.  103. 


!82 


THE   CHILD 


Dr  G.  Stanley  Hall,  in  his  study  of  '  Children's  Lies  '  (274), 
has  collated  the  results  of  the  tactful  investigation  of  '  300 
children  of  both  sexes  between  12  and  14.'  Seven  kinds  of 
lying  are  reported,  as  follows  : — 

I.  Systematised  palliatives,  insertion  of  qualifiers,  casuistic 
word-splitting — the  result  oi pseudophobia. 

II.  The  lie-heroic — lies  to  justify  noble  ends,  false  con- 
fessions, theoretic  or  imagined  self-sacrifice,  etc. 

III.  Truth  for  friends  and  lies  for  enemies — the  subor- 
dination of  truthfulness  to  personal  likes  and  dislikes. 

IV.  Selfish  lies — cheating  and  false  claims  in  games  at 
school,  false  excuses,  etc. 

V.  Imagination  and  play  lies  —  imitation,  mimic  panto- 
mime, 'making  belief,'  'imaginary  companions,'  naming, 
comparing,  etc.  Much  childish  play  owes  its  charm  to  self- 
deception. 

VI.  Pseudomania  (pathological  lying)— 'passionate  love  of 
showing  off,'  false  pretences,  acting  parts  and  attracting  atten- 
tion, fooling,  humbugging,  etc. 

VII.  Palliatives  for  lying  that  wounds  the  conscience, 
reiterations,  repeated  asseverations,  reversing  or  neutralising 
lies  to  one's  self. 

President  Hall  concludes  that  'some  forms  of  the  habit  of 
lying  are  so  prevalent  among  young  children  that  all  illustra- 
tions of  it  like  the  above  seem  trite  and  commonplace. 
Thorough-going  truthfulness  comes  hard  and  late,  and  school 
life  is  now  so  full  of  temptation  to  falsehood  that  an  honest 
child  is  its  rarest  as  well  as  its  noblest  work.' 

Ferriani  emphasises  the  diversity  and  characteristic  nature 
of  children's  lying  as  opposed  to  the  popular  view  of  their 
'  innocence '  of  all  such  offences,  what  Bourdin  calls  *  the 
myth  of  the  infallible  openheartedness  of  the  child '  (202,  pp. 
48-126).  Children  find  it  very  easy  to  say  'no'  and  'not,' 
and  many  '  lie  in  order  to  lie.'  The  distribution  (according 
to  origin)  of  the  lies  of  500  minor  criminals,  personally  ob- 
served by  Ferriani,  is  as  follows  :— 

6.  From  jealousy,    envy,    re- 
venge    .         ...     195 

7.  From    fancy  and  imagina- 
tion        ....     4S8 

8.  From  laziness    .         .         -370 

9.  From  magnanimity    .         .       29 


I. 

From   instinct    and   weak- 

ness        .... 

472 

2. 

In  self-defence  . 

401 

3- 

To  ridicule  others  (vanity, 

self-love) 

360 

4- 

From  imitation  . 

230 

5- 

From  egoism 

1^1 

THE   CHILD   AND   THE   CRIMINAL  383 

The  great  role  of  tlie  imagination  and  the  comparatively  insig- 
nificant part  played  in  the  production  of  lies  by  magnanimity 
are  noteworthy,  as  is  also  the  great  preponderance  of  boys 
among  child-liars. 

Lying  is,  perhaps,  only  one  form  of  the  deceit  by  which 
creatures  seek  to  protect  themselves. 

*  Animal  nature  is  one  immense  school  of  ruse  and  deceit,' 
says  Fehx  Plateau  in  his  essay  on  '  Protective  Resemblance.' 
Everywhere  (sea,  desert,  forest)  is  this  imitation,  which,  how- 
ever, is  largely  unconscious  :  '  The  phenomenon  of  protective 
resemblance  is  general ;  there  are  hardly  any  animal  forms 
which,  at  least  in  one  of  the  phases  of  their  existence,  have  no 
recourse  to  imitation.  In  our  countries,  in  temperate  Europe, 
in  Belgium,  one  meets  at  every  step  cases  of  dissimulation, 
yielding  in  nothing  to  those  of  tropical  nature '  (495). 

Gelmini(24i,  p.  342)  emphasises  also  the  deceit,  dissembl- 
ing, pretence,  hypocrisy  and  '  seeming  '  of  all  the  lower  orders 
of  nature,  as  means  given  to  the  weak  and  feeble  in  order 
that  they  might  survive  in  the  struggle  for  existence,  for  where 
strength  would  fail  victory  comes  from  artifice.  This  same 
tendency  to  artifice  and  dissimulation,  Gelmini  thinks,  is  very 
strong  with  primitive  and  barbarous  peoples,  among  whom  lies, 
imposture,  falsities  of  all  sorts,  flourish,  and  who  (to  judge  by 
the  experience  of  the  Italians  with  the  tribes  of  North-Eastern 
Africa)  are  double-faced,  faithless  beyond  comprehension.  So, 
too,  the  lower  classes  and  the  ignorant  and  criminal  among 
civilised  peoples,  with  their  superstitions,  mystifications,  jug- 
gleries and  deceptions  innumerable — the  preservation,  as  it  were, 
of  the  strata  of  savagery  and  barbarism.  It  would  take  a  long 
time,  also,  to  catalogue  the  lies  and  dissimulations  of  the  most 
cultured  classes  of  the  most  civilised  communities,  the  deceits 
and  hypocrisies  of  the  family,  of  society,  of  fashion,  of  wealth, 
of  friendship,  of  learning,  of  trade,  of  art,  of  industry,  of  science 
even,  and  of  religion,  with  its  creeds  and  ceremonials.  In  a 
word,  men  and  women  '  lie  with  their  feelings  and  emotions, 
with  their  thoughts,  inclinations  and  dispositions,  with  their 
words  and  their  deeds' — all  are  more  or  less  liars,  as  the  old 
saying  has  it.  The  environment  into  which  the  child  is  born 
is  well  suited  in  the  great  majority  of  cases  to  teach  him  the 
advantages  and  uses  of  lying.  Women  are  more  given  to  lying 
and  deceit  than  men  (the  ignorant  more  than  the  cultivated  and 
educated),  boys  less  than  girls,  according  to  this  author. 


384  THE   CHILD 

Wilh  children  lying  is  largely  a  means  of  self-defence,  as  it 
is  with  animals  ;  it  is  at  first,  without  malice,  a  handy  expedient 
for  avoiding  trouble  and  getting  along  in  life  with  the  least 
expenditure  of  effort,  and  a  great  deal  of  ingenuity  may  be 
employed  before  real  hypocrisy  is  consciously  manifest.  Certain 
ingenious  phenomena  of  lying  in  children  of  from  four  to  six 
years  of  age,  and  even  with  children  of  seven  or  eight  years,  are 
'  means  of  defence,'  and  become  fixed  and  ineradicable  only 
through  environment  and  educational  causes ;  otherwise  a 
salutary  transformation  takes  place  in  most  of  them,  whom 
fashion,  customs,  laws,  etc.,  do  not  succeed  in  corrupting  alto- 
gether with  their  education  in  deceit  and  subterfuge.  Some  of 
the  '  deceits '  of  children  plainly  indicate  their  nature  as  pro- 
tective devices — such,  e.g.,  as  keeping  quite  still,  pretending  to 
sleep,  putting  on  a  face,  imitating  the  actions,  posture,  speech, 
etc.,  of  others.  In  girls  the  disguising  and  dissimulation  of 
feelings  and  thoughts  is  even  more  ingenious  than  is  the  case 
with  boys,  and  exhibits  often  even  more  clearly  the  '  protective ' 
aspect.  During  this  period  the  plastic  minds  of  children  are 
subject  to  the  play  of  the  environment,  and  not  alone  the  fear 
of  punishment  but  many  other  factors  enter  into  the  fixation  of 
their  lying  and  deceiving  as  permanent  characteristics  ;  example 
is  here  all-important.  But  if  the  environment  is  honest,  noble, 
truthful,  just  and  sincere,  the  happy  transformation  takes  place 
in  the  years  of  adolescence  and  youth,  when  arise  the  strength 
and  the  glory  of  love  and  truth,  the  despisal  of  artifice  and 
circumlocution  ;  the  beauty  of  sacrifice  replaces  the  necessity 
of  self-defence,  the  child  with  the  '  protective '  mask  becomes 
the  youth  with  the  serving  soul.  As  aids  to  this  end  society 
needs  the  father  and  the  mother  whom  it  is  safe  for  the  child 
to  imitate,  the  teacher  who  is  not  bound  to  rule  by  fear  but 
by  personality,  who  knows  rather  how  to  evoke  the  good  than 
to  exorcise  the  bad,  to  create  atmospheres  of  truth,  rectitude, 
justice,  rather  than  to  attempt  the  destruction  of  evil  indi- 
vidualities that  are  more  or  less  transitory  and  evanescent. 
There  is  much  truth  in  Gelmini's  very  suggestive  essay,  though 
he  overestimates  the  amount  of  lying  and  deceiving  practised 
by  primitive  man. 

The  testimony  of  children  has  fallen  under  the  strict 
condemnation  of  many  writers,  who  have  no  faith  in  the 
folk-ideal  of  the  innocent  child  whose  every  word  and  action 
bespeak  truth.     Le  Bon  (351,  p.  35)  observes:  'Better  would 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   CRIMINAL  385 

it  be  to  settle  the  condemnation  of  an  accused  person  by 
"  heads  and  tails  "  than  to  decide  it,  as  has  been  done  so  many 
times,  on  the  testimony  of  a  child.'  The  subject  has  been 
discussed  in  detail  by  Rassier  and  Motet,  while  Mr  M.  H. 
Small's  paper  on  '  Methods  of  Manifesting  the  Instinct  for 
Certainty'  contains  not  a  little  of  interest  with  respect  to 
evidence,  asseveration,  pledges,  oaths,  etc.,  their  individual  and 
social  significance  among  children,  primitive  races,  and  the 
various  classes  of  civilised  communities.  It  is  probable  that 
the  truth-telling  capacity,  under  right  conditions,  of  the  child 
uninfluenced  by  his  scheming  elders  or  fellows,  like  that  of  the 
savage,  has  been  underestimated.  The  statement  of  so  excel- 
lent an  authority  as  Dr  Washington  Matthews  (419,  p.  5) :  'As 
the  result  of  over  thirty  years'  experience  among  Indians,  I 
must  say  I  have  not  found  them  less  truthful  than  the 
average  of  our  race,'  would  apply  to  many  other  primitive 
peoples  as  well.  A  proper  understanding  of  motive  and  action 
is  necessary  with  the  child  and  the  savage. 

Ethical  Dualism. — The  dualism  of  ethics,  which  is  char- 
acteristic of  so  many  primitive  peoples,  has  been  discussed  by 
Kulischer  (338),  who  points  out  how  common  has  been  in  the 
world  the  idea  of  law  and  all  the  protective  devices  of  society 
for  the  members  of  one's  own  fellowship  or  tribe,  but  just  the 
opposite  for  those  of  any  other.  Not  alone  the  annals  of  war 
and  conquest,  the  story  of  trade  and  commerce,  but  the 
history  of  religion  as  well  is  full  of  illustrations  of  this  ancient 
theory.  As  Dr  D.  G.  Brinton  observes  (74,  p.  59) :  '  In 
primitive  culture  and  survivals  there  is  a  dual  system  of  morals 
— the  one  of  kindness,  love,  help  and  peace,  applicable  to  the 
members  of  our  own  clan,  tribe  or  community ;  the  other  of 
robbery,  hatred,  enmity  and  murder,  to  be  practised  against 
all  the  rest  of  the  world ;  and  the  latter  is  regarded  as  quite  as 
much  a  sacred  duty  as  the  former.'  It  can  easily  be  seen 
from  these  facts  how  '  ethics,'  while  a  powerfully  associative 
element  in  the  one  direction,  becomes  dispersive  or  segregating 
in  others,  unless  the  sense  of  duty  is  taught  as  a  universal  and 
not  as  a  class  or  national  conception. 

This  practice  of '  aid,  kindness,  justice,  truth  and  fair-dealing ' 
towards  one  group  of  individuals  or  of  peoples,  and  of  '  enmity, 
hatred,  injury,  falsehood  and  deceit '  towards  the  other,  is  present 
in  well-marked  survivals  among  even  the  most  civilised  and 
religious  nations  to-day  (77,  p.   22S).     The  'spoiling  of  the 


386  THE   CHILD 

Egyptians,'  the  proverb  caveat  emptor^  the  theory  of  a  private 
and  a  public  code  of  morals,  the  continuance  of  smuggling 
and  the  robbery  of  Governments  by  public  servants,  the  lottery 
that  still  exists  in  the  name  of  charity  and  the  church,  the 
'deals'  and  tricks  of  the  caucus  and  the  political  machine  to 
which  the  '  good  citizen '  so  readily  submits,  the  defence  of  a 
'  brother'  at  all  hazards  and  with  an  utter  disregard  of  law  and 
justice  by  some  secret  societies,  the  '  honourable  lying  and 
noble  deceit '  gloried  in  by  the  fornicator  and  the  adulterer, 
the  fraud  practised  upon  women  before  and  after  marriage,  the 
widespread  concealment  of  certain  facts  from  children  and 
youth,  the  signing  of  a  creed  by  a  minister  who  is  far  from 
believing  its  evident  significance,  and  his  '  one  word  for  the 
congregation  but  another  for  his  intelligent  fellows ' — all  these 
things,  and  many  more,  show  how  far  we  are  still  from  the 
ideal  of  loving  our  neighbour  as  ourself.  Not  only  does  this 
dualism  of  ethics  occur  by  survival  in  communities  of  civilised 
adults,  but  it  is  often  one  of  the  marked  characteristics  of 
childhood.  An  interesting  instance  is  recorded  by  Miss  Lom- 
broso  (369,  p.  77)  of  a  boy  of  ten  years  who  proposed  to  spend 
a  piece  of  counterfeit  money  (given  him)  in  a  village  '  where 
no  one  knows  us.'  The  school-gangs,  ward-gangs,  secret 
societies  of  children,  etc.,  in  our  great  cities,  offer  numerous 
other  examples  of  this  duplex  code  of  morals.  Other  sources 
of  such  illustrations  are  public  and  private  schools,  city  children 
in  the  country,  college-games  and  the  like. 

The  analogy  between  the  '  boys'-gangs '  of  cities,  in  the 
matter  of  ethics  especially,  with  the  primitive  tribe  or  horde,  has 
been  very  recently  enlarged  upon  by  Mr  T.  J.  Browne  (85).  Mr 
Browne  notes  the  double  ethics,  the  consideration  of  strangers 
as  enemies  (who  may  be  maltreated,  lied  to,  or  deceived),  the 
stealing  and  predatory  impulses  combined  with  fidelity  and 
stern  repression  of  cowardice  and  'peaching' with  respect  to 
the  gang,  and  the  primitive  activities  primitively  regulated — 
hunting,  fishing,  swimming,  bird-nesting,  orchard-robbing,  hid- 
ing in  the  woods,  etc.  Here  activity  rather  than  imagination 
rules.  And  a  cowboy  rather  than  the  7idive  liar  of  early  youth 
is  the  result. 

The  power  which  this  double  system  of  ethics  still  has  in 
certain  walks  of  modern  society  is  well  brought  out  in  Proal's 
Political  Crime  {^\A^.  The  practical  result  is  the  divorce  of 
morality  from   politics ;   in  some  ways   the   doctrine   of  one 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   CRIMINAL  387 

private  morality  and  another  and  different  public  one  is  more 
insidious  than  it  was  among  the  ancient  Greeks,  although  it 
clearly  does  not  pay,  even  according  to  rude  utilitarian 
standards.  According  to  Proal,  state-interests  cloak  all  sorts 
of  iniquities  which  the  private  conscience  really  abhors — the 
deatlis  of  philosophers  and  men  of  science,  the  martyrdom  of 
Christians,  the  extermination  of  conquered  races,  the  slaughter 
of  mobs,  etc.  It  is  typified  in  a  Bismarck  who  would  not  kill 
a  fly  in  his  study,  but  superintended  the  machinery  which 
annihilated  thousands  on  the  battlefields  of  a  great  war. 

'■Lucky'  Criminals. — An  aspect  of  crime,  to  which  society 
has  not  yet  attached  sufficient  importance,  for  the  cumulative 
effects  of  its  influence  are  too  often  evident  to  the  careful 
investigator,  has  been  well  studied  by  Ferriani  in  his  volume 
on  Cunning  and  Lucky  Criminals  (203).  It  is  hard  to  esti- 
mate the  full  amount  of  damage  done  to  society  by  the  dis- 
honesty that  cannot  be  punished  by  law  and  the  crimes  that 
go  unwhipped  of  justice  —  the  result  of  the  little  lawless 
imperium  within  the  great  iniperium  of  law.  The  fraud,  the 
trickery  (white-gloved  so  often),  the  pimping,  the  blows  of 
mind  and  body  that  meet  with  no  remorse,  suffer  no  penalty 
or  punishment,  the  illusions,  the  suggestings,  the  broken 
faith,  the  flattering  promises — all  these  form  an  environment 
that  can  soon  turn  even  well-born  and  well-minded  children 
to  ways  of  more  open  and  audacious  crime.  Who  can 
estimate  the  influence  upon  the  growing  child  of  the  five 
classes  of  delinquents  which  Ferriani  treats  of — the  unknown 
criminals;  those  known  but  tolerated,  even  encouraged,  by 
degenerate  customs  of  the  day  ;  those  acquitted  on  account  of 
insufficient  evidence ;  those  freed  by  cunning  or  luck  ;  those 
condemned,  but,  thanks  to  their  lawyer  or  their  own  good 
luck  or  astuteness,  not  at  all  in  proportion  to  the  crime  com- 
mitted? The  accomplices  of  criminals  are  not  always  the 
dishonest ;  the  best  people,  through  misjudged  humanity,  to 
avoid  trouble,  for  family  reasons,  through  influence  of  politics, 
secret  societies  and  the  like,  not  infrequently  create  impunity 
for  the  delinquent.  And  a  large  amount  of  the  'crime'  that 
is  just  outside  the  scope  of  law  or  legislative  enactment  is 
committed  by  children  and  youth.  A  'cunning'  child  is 
often  as  admired  of  the  populace  as  of  its  parents.  But  there 
seems  to  be  a  certain  relativity  even  here.  Says  Dr  Washing- 
ton  ]\Iatlhews,  in  his  brief  essay  on  'The  Study  of  Ethics 


388  THE  CHILD 

Among  the  Lower  Races'  (419.  P-  3)  ■  'If  ^'e  find  a  com- 
munity of  some  15,000  people  wealthy  and  prosperous,  living 
harmoniously  together,  having  few  quarrels,  no  murders,  and 
yet  no  Courts  of  Law  and  no  obvious  punishments  for  breach 
of  law,  we  may  feel  assured  that  they  have  some  system  of 
ethics  which  holds  them  together  and  makes  them  live  like  a 
band  of  brothers.  Such  are  the  Navahos  of  New  Mexico.' 
For  a  thief  no  punishment  exists — 'if  found  with  the  stolen 
property  he  is  expected  to  restore  it,  that  is  all.'  With  the 
Navahos  '  the  time  is  evidently  not  long  gone  by  when  with 
them,  as  among  the  Spartans,  adroit  theft  was  deemed 
honourable.'  So  also  apparently  with  certain  other  crimes, 
'there  is  no  executive  power  to  enforce  obedience  to  laws  or 
to  punish  offenders.'  Eut  there  are  among  this  primitive 
people  incentives  to  right-doing,  'loss  of  favour  for  wrong- 
doing,' '  belief  in  bad  luck,'  etc.  Pure  feelings  of  benevolence, 
however,  with  the  Indian  as  with  us,  prompt  to  many  acts  and 
services  performed  without  the  slightest  hope  or  acceptance  of 
reward.  According  to  Dr  Matthews,  conscience  also  is  a 
considerable  restraining  influence  with  the  Navaho,  much 
more  than  many  writers  have  believed,  especially  among  the 
more  thoughtful  and  religious  members  of  the  tribe.  Their 
asseverations,  solemn  protestations  and  religious  declarations 
afford  abundant  proof  of  this,  and  when  Torlino,  the  pagan 
Navaho  priest,  asked,  '  Why  should  I  lie  to  you  ? '  appealing  to 
the 'eyes'  in  earth,  sky,  night,  sun,  dawn,  twilight,  we  feel 
with  Dr  Matthews  that  'we  have  here  in  the  eternal  vigilance 
of  many  mysterious  eyes  a  substitute  for  the  All-seeing  Eye 
and  a  distinct  conception  of  the  inward  monitor.' 

Corporal  Punishment. — Dr  G.  Stanley  Hall,^  in  his  article 
on  'Moral  Education  and  Will-Training,'  cites  from  Richter 
the  record  of  a  Swabian  schoolmaster,  named  Haberle,  as  an 
example  of  the  severity  which  once  prevailed  in  Germany  in 
the  matter  of  punishment — truly  a  remarkable  count  for  51 
years  and  7  months  as  a  teacher:  '911,527  blows  with  a 
cane;  124,010  with  a  rod;  20,989  with  a  ruler;  136,715  with 
the  hand;  10,295  o^'^r  the  mouth;  7,905  boxes  on  the  ear; 
1,115,800  snaps  on  the  head;  22,763  7iota  botes  with  Bible, 
catechism,  hymn-book  and  grammar;  777  times  boys  had  to 
kneel  on  peas;  613  times  on  triangular  blocks  of  wood  ;  5001 
had  to  carry  a  timber  mare  and  1701  hold  the  rod  high — the 
1  Fcdag.  Seiii.,  II.  p.  82. 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   CRBHNAL  389 

last  two  being  punishments  of  his  own  invention.  Of  the 
blows  with  the  cane,  800,000  were  for  Latin  vowels,  and 
76,000  of  those  with  the  rod  for  Bible  verses  and  hymns.  He 
used  a  scolding  vocabulary  of  over  3000  terms,  of  which  one- 
third  were  of  his  own  invention.' 

Against  this  punitory  maximum  Dr  Hall,  the  gist  of  whose 
article  is  'that  only  in  so  far  as  the  primitive  will  of  the  child  is 
wrong  by  nature  are  drastic  reconstructions  of  any  sort  needed,' 
everything  depending  upon  '  how  aboriginal  our  goodness  is,' 
and  upon  '  that  better  purity  established  by  our^  mothers  in 
the  heart  before  the  superfcetation  of  precept  is  possible,' 
ranges  'the  now  too  common  habit  of  coquetting  for  the 
child's  favour,  and  tickling  its  ego  with  praises  and  prizes, 
and  pedagogic  pettifogging  for  its  good-will,  a.nd  sentimental 
fear  of  a  judicious  slap  to  rouse  a  spoiled  child  with  no  will 
to  break,  to  make  it  keep  step  with  the  rest  in  conduct, 
instead  of  delaying  a  whole  schoolroom  to  apply  a  subtle 
psychology  of  motive.'  It  may  be  true  that  'even  the  worst 
punishments  are  but  very  faint  types  of  what  nature  has  in 
store  in  later  life  for  some  forms  of  perversity  of  will,  and_  are 
better  than  sarcasm,  ridicule  or  tasks  as  penalties,'  but  it  is 
also  a  fact  that  very  many  primitive  peoples,  as  Steinmetz 
shows  in  his  voluminous  but  invaluable  '  Ethnological  Studies 
concerning  the  First  Developments  of  Punishment,'  have 
placed  their  reliance  almost  entirely  upon  'sarcasm,  ridicule 
and  tasks  as  penalties,'  and  it  by  no  means  appears  that  in 
sparing  the  rod  and  the  severe  corporal  punishments  they 
have  spoiled  the  child.  Indeed,  as  Steinmetz  says,  the  sur- 
prising phenomenon  is  the  occurrence  among  so  many  people 
of  a  gentle  yet  positive  education,  markedly  in  contrast  with 
the  punitory  systems  (especially  that  of  corporeal  chastise- 
ment) in  vogue  amongst  the  civilised  races  of  to-day,  although, 
to  be  sure,  stern  discipline  does  find  a  place  with  a  minority 
of  these  uncivilised  peoples  (613,  II.  p.  203).  Punishment 
of  the  sort  most  commonly  employed  in  the  last  few  centuries  of 
European  and  American  civilisation  (the  contrasting  of  extreme 
militarism,  perhaps,  to  the  marionettism  of  the  kindergarten) 
is  certainly  not  the  modiis  operandi  of  the  greatest  number^  of 
primitive  peoples,  with  whom  'tender  and  even  pampering 
treatment '  is  the  rule  and  custom ;  some  of  them,  indeed,  like 
the  sea-Dyaks,  hold  that  the  more  unruly  and  troublesome  the 
.boy  the  more  valiant  and  worthy  the  man  (613,  II.  p.  108)^ 


390  THE   CHILD 

a  belief,  allowing  for  the  difference  between  a  Malay  pirate 
and  a  German  or  American  philosopher,  not  so  very  remote 
from  some  of  current  doctrines  as  to  high-school  pupils  and 
collegians  much  favoured  in  certain  academic  quarters  at  the 
present  day.  And  the  modern  educational  reformer,  who 
inveighs  against  striking  down  the  child's  soul  by  rude  mental 
processes,  might  do  worse  than  claim  kinship  with  the 
American  Indian  who  declared  that  striking  the  child's  body 
injured  its  soul.  But  not  all  the  children  of  primitive 
peoples  are  of  the  violent,  boisterous  and  unruly  sort.  Not 
alone  of  the  Malays  can  it  truthfully  be  said,  *  their  children 
are  very  well  behaved  towards  Europeans,  and  are  superior  to 
the  Western  child  in  many  like  respects.' 

According  to  Steinmetz,  the  origin  of  non-education  and 
pampering  of  children  among  primitive  peoples  is  manifold. 
Unrestrained  love,  precocity  and  early  maturity,  lack  of  strict 
norms  and  educational  as  well  as  moral  ideals  generally,  the 
long  association  with  the  mother  and  her  preponderating 
influence  in  the  tribe  (in  the  days  of  matriarchy),  the  life  of 
the  father  outside  the  maternal  home,  the  father's  fear  of  his 
son  (among  those  peoples  who  believed  that  the  soul  of  the 
parent  had  passed  into  the  new,  young  body  of  his  son),  and 
the  need  for  the  latter  as  heir  and  cult-preserver,  etc.  It  is, 
therefore,  not  at  all  correct  to  say  that  the  change  from 
matriarchy  to  patriarchy  was  the  sole,  or  always  the  chief, 
cause  of  the  development  of  sterner  methods  of  education  and 
severe  punishment  of  children  among  the  more  primitive  races 
of  man. 

Zaborowski^  criticises  Makarewicz's  attempt  to  derive 
punishment  and  justice  from  the  primitive  authority  of  the 
paierfajnilias  (the  evolution  of  punishment  consisting  in  the 
transference  of  this  right  to  the  tribal  chief,  then  to  the  state), 
inclining  to  seek  its  origin  in  personal  vengeance,  acts  which 
do  not  provoke  the  vengeance  of  anybody  being  looked  upon 
as  indifferent.  Makarewicz's  contention,  however,  that  the 
three  primitive  forms  of  social  reaction— public,  social  and 
instinctive  vengeance;  paternal  authority,  whence  arise  later 
family  and  tribal  jurisdiction,  concentrated  always  in  the 
hands  of  a  single  individual;  and  sacerdotal  jurisdiction, 
extending  to  all  acts  outraging  divinity — may  exist  simultane- 
ously or  separately,  is  supported  by  much  ethnographic  testi- 
1  Arch,  de  NcuroL,  1898,  p.  523. 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   CRIMINAL  391 

mony,  and  the  fact  is  not  without  example  in  the  world  of  the 
lower  animals. 

Corporal  punishment,  in  the  shape  of  flogging  or  whipping, 
is,  according  to  Morrison,  not  recognised  by  the  penal  codes 
of  France,  Italy,  Germany,  Austria,  Russia,  Switzerland  and 
Sweden,  while  in  some  form  or  other  it  is  patt  of  the  criminal 
law  of  England,  Scotland,  Ireland,  Norway,  Denmark  and 
several  of  the  British  colonies  (Victoria,  New  South  Wales, 
Canada) ;  the  state  of  Delaware,  in  America,  has  recently 
restored  the  whipping-post.  Denmark  seems  to  be  'the  only 
civilised  community  where  the  whipping  of  girls  is  a  punish- 
ment admitted  by  the  criminal  law';  in  that  country  'whipping 
is  used  for  girls  up  to  the  age  of  12,  and  for  boys  up  to  the 
age  of  15,'  and  'flogging  is  resorted  to  for  youths  between  the 
ages  of  15  and  18  if  they  are  medically  certified  as  fit  to  endure 
it.'  In  Norway  'whipping  is  a  very  common  form  of  punish- 
ment for  children  between  10  and  15  years  of  age.'  In 
England,  where,  in  1893,  2858  children  were  sentenced  to  be 
whipped,  there  are  many  safeguards  for  the  offender — a  light 
rod  when  the  child  is  under  ten,  a  limited  number  of  strokes 
(not  more  than  six  when  the  child  is  under  12,  nor  more  than 
twelve  when  he  is  under  14),  private  punishment,  with  a 
witness,  medical  consultation,  etc.  ;  in  Scotland,  in  1893,  there 
were  355  boys  whipped,  and  in  Ireland  and  the  colonies  the 
punishment  is  rare  (in  Victoria,  during  the  seventeen  years, 
1873-1890,  only  44  were  so  punished,  and  in  New  South 
Wales,  in  1890,  none).  Morrison  notes  that  while  in  England 
and  Scotland,  according  to  the  evidence  of  magistrates, 
teachers,  etc.,  before  the  Royal  Commission  on  Reformatory 
and  Industrial  Schools,  'national  opinion,  so  far  as  it  finds 
expression,  is  on  the  whole  in  favour  of  retaining  corporal 
correction  as  a  means  of  dealing  with  juvenile  offenders,'  it 
must  be  admitted  that  '  in  so  far  as  the  statute  books  are  to  be 
taken  as  an  index  of  the  deliberate  judgments  of  civilised 
communities,  the  balance  of  international  opinion  is  hostile  to 
whipping.'  And,  being  so  hostile,  it  is  also  in  consonance 
with  the  views  of  most  primitive  peoples. 

Child  Morals. — Children,  at  a  very  early  age,  '  are  ex- 
pansive,' according  to  Miss  Lombroso  (369,  p.  84),  'more 
through  need  of  excitement  than  through  real  sensibility,  for 
the  same  reason  that  they  riot,  shout  and  jump  in  their  play,' 
and  their  apparent  insensibility  is  largely  due  to  their  inability 


392 


THE   CHILD 


to  feel  loss,  separation,  death  as  pain.  It  has  been  said  with 
no  little  truth  that  at  this  period  of  life,  since  play  and  excite- 
ment are  the  life  of  the  child,  '  he  loves  him  alone  who  diverts 
him  and  appeals  readily  to  his  mind.'  Remorse,  even  re- 
gardmg  the  mother,  '  is  born  not  so  much  from  consciousness 
of  erro'r  committed,  as  from  fear  of  the  loss  of  the  love,  the 
useful  and  necessary  benevolence  of  the  parent ;  hence  the 
child's  pleasure  and  solicitude  in  overwhelming  the  mother 
with  praise  and  caresses'  (369,  p.  88).  The  affectivity  of 
childhood  generally  is  much  weaker  than  that  of  adults,  and 
is  essentially  jealous — egoistic,  and  we  may  say  in  brief: 
'  The  child  tends  not  to  love  but  to  be  loved  and  exclusively 
loved.'  Cruelty,  in  children,  perhaps,  reduces  itself  'to  the 
fact  of  their  impossibility  to  conceive  the  pain  of  others' 
(369,  p.  98).  Altogether,  'the  morality  of  childhood  is  much 
more  negative  than  positive,'  but  the  inherited  savage-like  vanity, 
egoism,  simulation,  cruelty  of  childhood,  instincts  so  universal 
and  yet  so  dangerous,  are,  after  all,  adapted  to  prepare  the 
child  in  some  measure  for  social  life,  for  'if  the  child  were 
pure,  good,  ingenuous,  without  egoism  and  without  simulation, 
he  would  experience  much  greater  fatigue  and  uncertainty  in 
orienting  himself  and  winning  in  the  struggle  for  life'  (369, 
p.  10 1).  Nature,  therefore,  has  been  kind  to  him  in  having 
him  born  a  little  lower  than  those  about  him— the  good  angels 
of  his  environment. 

'Morally,'  Miss  Lombroso  tells  us,  'the  child  differs 
perhaps  less  from  us  adults  than  he  does  mentally;  the 
intelligence  of  the  child  passes  through  a  series  of  evolu- 
tions, while  his  moral  sentiments  approach  more  nearly  to 
ours,  even  from  his  first  years'  (369,  p.  61).  In  fact,  'the 
same  characteristic  traits  of  us  adults  and  civilised  folk  appear 
in  the  child,  like  a  musical  w^;'///that  can  have  infinite  variations, 
but  whose  fundamental  note  is  always  the  same.'  In  the 
morals  of  the  man  and  of  the  child  this  fundamental  note  is 
'self-protection,  conservation  of  the  ego,  the  desire  of 
emerging,  of  procuring  one's  self  the  greatest  number  of 
advantages  or  pleasures  possible,  sparing  at  the  same  time  as 
much  as  possible  one's  own  energies.'  Hence,  '  misoneism  '  in 
the  child,  its  protest  against  the  disturbance  of  its  equilibrium, 
against  the  destruction  of  its  pre-established  notions,  against 
constraint  to  think,  against  expenditure  of  all  sorts  of  mental 
energy  beyond  the  necessary  minimum.     Since  the  child  runs 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   CRIMINAL  393 

over,  in  a  few  short  years,  the  phases  of  the  mental  evolution 
of  the  race,  there  necessarily  crops  out  in  him  much  of  the 
savage  and  of  primitive  man ;  many  children,  indeed,  seem  to 
have  innate  in  them  the  passion  for  lying,  dissimulation  and 
vanity,  which  can  only  be  compared  with  the  craft  and  falsity 
attributed  to  many  savage  peoples.  Appeals  to  honour  and 
justice,  which  the  child  lias  no  comprehension  of,  must  fail 
with  such,  and  experience  seems  the  only  teacher  fitted  to 
instruct  them  :  '  We  cannot  make  such  a  child  cease  doing  a 
certain  thing,  stop  telling  lies,  no  longer  want  things  for 
himself,  because  they  are  bad ;  it  is  better  to  make  him  see 
that  his  lie  avails  nothing  and  is  soon  found  out,  to  make  him 
understand  by  example,  by  taking  from  him  when  he  is  not 
willing  to  yield  something  to  others,  that  he  may  feel  as 
he  makes  others  feel ;  by  making  him  feel  himself,  when 
he  is  cruel,  what  physical  pain  is.  This  is  one  of  the  few 
means  of  educating  the  child  ;  better  than  repressing  with 
threats  or  fatidical  sentences  the  manifestations  of  feelings 
which,  being  instinctive,  will  break  out  again  in  other  forms ' 
(369,  p.  80).  This  spirit  of  calculation  in  the  child,  present 
unconsciously  in  even  his  instinctive  acts,  it  may  be 
his  naive  judgment  of  advantage  and  disadvantage,  can 
thus  often  be  appealed  to  successfully  when  no  other  line 
of  least  resistance  is  apparent  in  all  his  mental  make-up. 
'  Are  there  good  and  bad  children  ? '  asks  Berenini,  Italian 
deputy  and  lawyer,  and  his  own  answer  runs  (202,  p.  401): 
'  No !  There  are  individual,  sanguine,  choleric,  mild,  active, 
quiet,  etc.,  temperaments.  The  leadership  of  moral  behaviour, 
however,  is  lacking,  for  it  is  the  evidence  of  a  gradually 
developing  factor  not  yet  attained — social  life.  To  the  child, 
then,  all  things  are  possible,  good  and  bad  and  the  thousand 
and  one  intervening  stages;  only  dispositions  and  tendencies 
are  present  and  the  results  are  whatever  comes  of  the  environ- 
ment, or  of  education,  which  is  merely  the  substitution  of  one 
viilieu  for  another.  The  secret  of  preserving  the  good,  the 
true  office  of  education,  lies  '  not  in  sermons,  harangues,  idle 
talk,  but  in  pure  air,  healthy  food,  good  corporeal  and  mental 
exercise,  the  never-failing  presence  and  example  of  moral 
customs  and  habits — the  harmony  of  healthy  social  life.' 

Education  and  Crime. — The  relation  of  education  and  in- 
struction to  crime  is  thoroughly  discussed  by  Ferriani,  who 
cites    the    opinions    of   numerous    authorities    ancient    and 


394  THE  CHILD 

modern.  Himself  believing  that  'an  ignorant  honest  man  is 
worth  a  thousand  educated  rascals,'  the  author  is  not  of  those 
who  see  in  education  the  eradicator  of  all  crime.  Victor 
Hugo  was  altogether  too  enthusiastic  when  he  declared  that 
'  every  new  schoolhouse  closed  a  jail ' ;  there  is  a  good  deal 
of  truth  in  the  saying  of  Seymour  :  '  Knowledge  is  power 
not  virtue,  it  held  to  both  good  and  bad.'  The  bad  example 
of  'state,  school,  family,  tlie  protective  trinity  of  childhood,' 
often  undoes  all  that  their  honest,  sometimes  even  unified, 
aims  have  sought  to  accomplish,  and  very  frequently  the  ideal 
— for  men  and  women  must  have  some  sort  of  ideal — of  the 
criminal  takes  the  place  of  the  ideal  of  the  father,  the  mother, 
the  teacher,  the  statesman.  And  too  often  the  educated 
classes  are  the  worst  offenders,  judged  by  their  conven- 
tionalities, '  white  lies,  opportunism,  loose  ideas  of  morals  and 
justice,  defiance  of  law,  and  neglect  of  necessary  duties  ;  love 
of  money,  weak  consciences,  hypocrisy  are  sometimes  made 
doubly  dangerous  by  needless  education.'  Ferriani  holds  that 
excessive  education  (companioned  by  fear,  the  instinct  of 
defence,  vanity,  etc.)  is  a  powerful  factor  in  developing  the 
germs  of  crime  in  children  degenerately  affected,  and  considers 
that,  so  far  as  education  is  concerned  with  the  amelioration  or 
the  prevention  of  crime,  the  remedy  lies  in  the  increased  use- 
fulness of  the  elementary  schools — the  foundation  stone  of  all. 
The  universities  and  academies,  turning  out  so  many  graduates 
that  the  use  of  their  diplomas  often  means  the  sale  of  their 
consciences,  may  be  let  alone  by  criminological  educational 
reformers  (202,  pp.  339-409). 

Ciraoli,  who  has  studied  the  criminal  women  of  Naples, 
thus  expresses  his  opinion  of  the  various  formative  environ- 
ments of  the  young:  'The  most  notable  institution  for  moral 
discipline  is  the  home,  the  second  the  school,  the  last  the  city, 
the  teacher  of  practical  life.  If  a  woman  finds  herself  in  the 
last  without  having  made  a  sufiiciently  lasting  stay  in  the  first, 
her  moral  education  lacks  its  foundation,  and  the  preparation 
in  school  is  not  enough  to  afford  resistance  against  the  charm 
with  which  city  life  has  surrounded  what  the  theologians  call 
sin'  (202,  p.  34s). 

Safety  lies  in  following  out  the  idea  of  Cattaneo  and 
beginning  with  separate  elementary  schools  for  the  normal 
and  the  abnormal,  the  good  being  kept  out  of  touch  with  the 
bad.     But  there  must  be  harmony  with  the  family  and  the 


THE   CHILD   AND   THE   CRIMINAL  395 

State,  the  home  and  the  city;  ever) where,  as  far  as  possible, 
the  degenerate  must  be  kept  from  contaminating  the  strong 
and  the  virtuous;  and  rehgion,  ethical  and  moral,  such  as 
really  appeals  to  children,  the  faith  that  trusts  and  is  not 
deceived,  must  play  its  role  alike  at  home  and  in  school.  No 
education  is  woith  anything  that  is  without  a  psychological  basis. 
Moreover,  it  must  be  fully  recognised  that  no  education  can 
completely  change  the  nal  precocious  criminal,  and  that  all 
attempts  at  the  education  of  minor  criminals  must  be  based 
upon  the  individual  study  of  the  criminal  himself  or  herself. 
A  siiion  a/iqtte  of  education  is  as  necessary  here  as  w^ith  the 
most  normal  individuals  who  form  part  of  any  given  com- 
munity. 


AINU    GIRL. 
(From  Rep.  U.S.Nat.  Mus.,   1890.)    This  picture— the  lip-tattoo  aids  in  the 
illusion— illustrates  the   resemblances    of   the  sexes  so  common    among   prnnitive 
peoples. 


CPTAPTER   X 

THE    CHILD    AND    WOMAN 

Sex  Development. — The  great  biological  distinction  of  the  sexes, 
the  development  of  which  Geddes  and  Thomson  have  so 
admirably  sketched,  and  the  far-reaching  results  of  which 
Havelock  Ellis  has  so  well  summarised,  is  that  woman  pro- 
duces the  ovum  and  man  fertilises  it.  Hence  all  the  morpho- 
logical peculiarities  immediately  connected  with  this  difference 
are  termed  primarily  sexual  characters,  although  in  the 
strictest  sense  only  the  sexual  glands  can  be  called  primary, 
the  external  sexual  organs  being  not  the  essential  causative  and 
determinative  entities.  Such  other  sexual  peculiarities,  as,  to 
use  the  words  of  Havelock  Ellis,  'by  more  highlydifferentiat- 
ing  the  sexes,  help  to  make  them  more  attractive  to  each 
other,  and  so  to  promote  the  union  of  the  sperm-cell  with  the 
ovum-cell '  (183,  p.  19),  are  styled  secondary  sexual  characters. 
Kurella,  however,  taking  the  external  sexual  organs  to  be  the 
real  secondary  characters,  inclines  to  regard  the  characteristics 
just  referred  to  (peculiarities  of  voice,  hair,  breasts,  etc.)  as 
tertiary  sexual  characteristics,  while  Ellis,  who  introduced 
the  expression  'tertiary  sexual  characters,'  prefers  to  apply 
the  term  to  certain  differences— such  as  the  greater  shallow- 
ness, proportionately,  of  the  female  skull,  the  greater  size  and 
activity  of  the  thyroid  gland  in  women,  the  smaller  proportion 
of  red  blood  corpuscles,  the  different  relationship  of  the  parts 
of  the  brain  to  each  other — which  are  mostly  matters  of  averages, 
and  which,  while  not  of  great  importance  from  the  zoological 
point  of  view,  are  of  considerable  interest  from  the  anthropo- 
logical point  of  view,  very  often  of  interest  from  the  patho- 
logical point  of  view,  and  occasionally  of  great  interest  from 
the  social  point  of  view  (183,  p.  20).     In  the  earliest  stages 

397 


398  THE   CHILD 

of  the  development  of  the  human  being,  '  both  male  and 
female  glands  and  sexual  passages  occur  together  and  equally 
complete  in  the  same  individual,  and  in  the  majority  of  cases 
factors  unknown  to  us  decide  which  of  these  glands  (together 
with  its  passage)  shall  survive  and  develop,  and  which  rapidly 
degenerate  until  scarcely  recognisable  vestigia  are  left' 
(341,  p.  236).  The  process  by  which  the  sperm-gland  or  the 
ovum-gland  succeeds  in  acquiring  its  chance  to  further  de- 
velopment may  very  well,  Kurella  remarks,  be  looked  upon  as 
*a  struggle  of  the  parts,'  in  the  sense  of  Roux.  At  the  time 
when  this  determination  occurs,  'the  external  genitals 
(hitherto  altogether  of  indifferent  form,  they  have  no  double 
*' Anlage"),  receive  an  impulse  to  change  into  the  female  or  the 
male  type.' 

In  early  childhood,  as  is  well  known,  the  sexes  are 
essentially  distinguished  only  by  what  Kurella  calls  primary  and 
secondary  sexual  characters,  but  somewhat  later  appear  'in- 
dications of  the  tertiary  characters,  which  must  be  really  latent 
in  children  more  or  less,  else  how  could  a  father,  himself 
showing  no  sign  of  them  himself,  transmit  to  his  daughters 
tertiary  peculiarities  of  his  own  mother?'  As  to  which  of  the 
two  groups  of  tertiary  sexual  characters  is  now  to  develop,  the 
germ-glands,  'which  during  the  first  12-14  years  of  life  remain 
without  function,  determine.'  If  before  they  have  commenced 
to  function  they  are  removed  or  become  atrophied,  we  have,  in 
general,  '  the  development  not  of  the  tertiary  characters  of  the 
original  sex,  but  that  of  the  latent  rudiment  of  the  tertiary  char- 
acters of  the  other  sex.'  If,  for  instance,  the  removal  of  the 
testicles  or  a  morbid  shrivelling  of  them  takes  place  in  a  boy, 
'  he  gets  a  sort  of  female  breast,  becomes  a  gynsecomast ;  other 
female  characters  appear  also,  and  sometimes  the  result  is 
infantihsm,  sometimes  feminism.'  It  is  fair  to  assume,  argues 
Kurella,  that  the  normal  testicles  contain  some  chemical 
substance,  the  presence  of  which  hinders  the  development  of 
the  tertiary  sexual  characters  of  the  female  group,  so  that  it 
may  be  said  that  '  the  development  of  the  breasts,  the  fat  of 
the  hips  and  thighs,  etc.,  is  not  the  result  of  an  impulse  pre 
ceeding  from  the  ripening  ovaries,  but  the  consequence  of  the 
fact  that  the  latent  rudiment  of  those  structures  are  subject  to 
no  arrest  on  the  part  of  the  testicles.'  Vice  versa,  although  to  a 
less  degree,  all  this  applies  to  woman,  '  in  whom  the  develop- 
irient  of  the  ovaries  arrests  the  progress  of  the  tertiary  male 


THE   CHILD   AND   WOMAN  399 

characters  latently  present.'  Three  times  in  the  life  of  the  in- 
dividual, says  Kurella,  '  the  germ-glands  determine  the  most 
essential  characters  of  the  body.  i.  After  the  first  sexual  differ- 
entiation— when  the  form  of  the  secondary  sexual  characters, 
the  external  genital  organs,  is  determined.  2.  At  the  time  of 
puberty — the  form  of  the  tertiary  characters  all  over  the 
organism  is  fixed.  3.  After  the  climacteric  and  in  old  age  (in 
man)  involution  of  a  sexual  sort  sets  in.  After  the  climacteric, 
e.g.,  women  often  begin  to  grow  a  beard  and  take  to  politics, 
while  in  aging  men  analogous  changes  occur.' 

D'Aguanno,  in  his  anthropological  and  sociological  study 
of  woman,  notes  that  the  more  recent  studies  in  embryology 
have  'triumphantly  disproved  the  opinion  of  those  who  con- 
tended that  the  female  was  derived  from  an  arrest  of  develop- 
ment of  the  male  embryo'  (i,  p.  451),  it  being  now  known 
that  the  embryo,  at  a  certain  stage  of  its  existence,  contains 
within  itself  the  elements  of  both  sexes ;  is  in  fact  herma- 
phrodite, becoming  male  or  female  by  the  atrophy  of  one 
sexual  character  and  the  continued  development  of  the  other. 
It  would,  in  reality,  be  just  as  true  to  state  that  the  male  arose 
from  an  arrested  development  of  the  female  embryo  as 
vice  versa. 

Talbot,  who  considers  that  '  the  female  type,  from  the 
standpoint  of  bodily  and  nervous  development,  most  nearly 
approximates  the  promise  of  the  child  type'  (625,  p.  273), 
holds  that  the  forms  of  degeneracy  known  as  infantilism, 
masculinism  and  feminism  are  '  practically  arrests  of  develop- 
ment of  the  promise  of  the  child  type.'  In  infantilism  the  body 
(the  face  especially)  or  the  nervous  system  (or  both),  or  some 
particular  organ  or  characteristic,  is  checked  or  arrested  while 
the  rest  of  the  organism  develops  regularly  and  fully.  Thus 
some  people  are  in  many  respects  physically  children,  and  look 
young  throughout,  like  the  gamin  of  Paris  described  by 
Brouardel  (143,  p.  173).  Masculinism  originates  when  'the 
female  has  proceeded  so  far  in  development  as  to  have  female 
organs  and  their  functions  while  retaining  traces  of  a  pre- 
dominant character  of  the  lower  male  type,'  and  feminism 
when  '  the  male  has  proceeded  along  the  line  of  evolution 
toward  the  female  type,  but  ere  sex  has  been  fixed,  further 
development  has  been  checked  and  the  male  type  is  finally 
assumed  as  the  predominant  one.'  As  arrests  of  development 
may  occur  at  any  point  in  the  evolution  of  the  indifferent  type 


400  THE   CHILD 

from  which  both  sexes  originate  all  sorts  of  combinations  are 
possible,  and  not  infrequently  '  the  nervous  system  takes  one 
sexual  ply,  while  the  body  takes  another,'  and  we  have,  as  it 
were,  a  male  soul  in  a  female  body,  or  vice  versa ;  often  the 
male  possesses  only  a  single  marked  female  characteristic, 
or  the  female  only  one  very  notable  male  characteristic. 
Interesting  discussions  of  some  of  the  points  involved  are  to 
be  found  in  Meige,  Ammon,  and  the  numerous  works  on 
sexual  pathology. 

Ammon,  basing  his  conclusions  upon  the  examination  of 
some  23,000  conscripts,  and  the  periodical  measurement  of 
several  hundred  individuals,  observes,  with  reference  to  the 
nature  and  prevalence  of  infantilism  and  feminism  :  i.  The 
infantile  individuals  found  among  conscripts  aged  19-22  years 
are  not  all  anomalies,  the  majority  being  the  extremes  of  a  long 
series  of  retarded  individuals,  who,  in  the  course  of  time,  will 
develop.  2.  This  transitory  form  of  infantilism  is  principally 
found  in  individuals  of  small  stature  and  smooth  body.  3. 
Permanent  infantilism  is  very  rare  among  the  conscripts,  and 
occurs  in  individuals  of  all  statures  from  the  shortest  to  the 
tallest.  4.  Feminism,  manifesting  itself  by  the  development 
of  lactic  glands,  is  not  rare  in  boys,  but  usually  appears  in  a 
transitory  form.  It  begins  about  the  time  of  the  development 
of  puberty,  and  after  having  become  more  or  less  strikingly 
advanced,  regression  take  place,  with  ultimate  complete  dis- 
appearance. 5.  It  is  erroneous  to  consider  feminism  and 
permanent  infantilism  correlated.  6.  When  the  growth  of  the 
lactic  glands  in  youth  does  not  suffer  early  arrest,  these 
develop  markedly,  causing  the  breasts  to  resemble  those  of 
girls  of  fifteen,  and  no  regression  seems  to  occur.  6.  The 
excessive  development  of  these  glands  has  no  influence  upon 
the  development  of  the  genital  organs  or  upon  that  of  the 
secondary  sexual  characters  which  evolve  in  quite  the  normal 
fashion.  These  extraordinary  cases  may  have  suggested  to  the 
Greek  artists  the  idea  of  hermaphroditism. 

Hyperthelia  (the  presence  of  supernumerary  nipples  in  males) 
has  been  exhaustively  studied  by  Dr  Karl  von  Bardeleben, 
upon  whose  suggestion  examinations  by  [)hysicians  of  the 
army  were  made  of  some  100,000  young  men  (mostly  about 
twenty-one  years  of  age)  in  connection  with  the  recruitment 
for  1893.  '■'^'he  total  average  for  all  the  provinces  of  Prussia 
of  individuals  possessing  supernumerary  teats  is  8.94  out  of 


Tin-:  CHILD  A^D  WOMAN  401 

95,749  persons  investigated,  the  percentages  ranging  in  diverse 
localities  from  0.5  in  Dortmund  to  31.5  in  Lauban  (Lower 
Silesia),  differences  so  great  that  only  the  observer's  faith  in 
their  own  eyes  could  justify  them  in  recording.  The  occurrence 
of  high  percentages  in  West  Prussia,  Posen,  the  parts  of 
Silesia  adjacent  to  Bohemia,  Mecklenburg,  etc.,  where  the 
physically  not  yet  Germanised  Slavonic  element  is  still  to  be 
found,  leads  the  author  to  see  in  hyperthelia  a  valuable  anthro- 
pological characteristic,  serving  to  distinguish  the  Germanic 
from  the  Slavonic  population  in  Prussia.  Of  the  individuals 
possessing  supernumerary  nipples,  38  per  cent,  had  them  on  the 
right  side,  43  per  cent,  on  the  left,  and  19  per  cent,  on  both 
sides  of  the  body.  As  to  position,  with  respect  to  the  normal 
nipple,  the  supernumeiaiy  ones  were,  seemingly,  more  frequent 
below  than  above  it.  Most  of  them  lay  in  a  line  drawn  from 
the  shoulder  or  axilla  to  the  genital  region,  the  lines  on  each 
side  of  the  body  crossing  each  other  between  the  navel  and 
the  genitals,  very  few  (except  in  Wiesbaden)  occurring  below 
the  navel.  The  supernumerary  nipple  will  usually  be  found 
about  8  cm.  below  the  normal  one,  according  to  the  author's 
summary,  and  somewhat  oftener  on  the  left  side  of  the  body 
than  on  the  right.  It  is  an  interesting  fact  that  with  the 
increased  proportion  of  individuals  possessing  supernumerary 
nipples  goes  an  increase  in  the  number  of  supernumerary 
nipples  observed  in  the  individual ;  thus  in  Mecklenburg,  where 
the  percentage  is  as  high  as  30  per  cent,  as  many  as  6  have 
been  noted. 

A  most  interesting  case  of  congenital  hyperthelia  has  been 
reported  by  Herr  von  Brunn ;  twins  (brothers),  each  had  a 
supernumerary  nipple  on  each  side  of  the  body  below  the 
normal  ones.  Henke  correlates  with  the  rudimentary  nipples, 
the  similar  phenomena,  wads  of  skin,  little  elevations  of  the 
skin,  vascular  knots,  etc.,  which  are  very  common,  e.g.,  on  the 
dorsal  surface  of  the  first  metacarpal  space.  Kiikenthal,  who 
has  investigated  the  embryonal  development  of  Cetacean,  has 
noted  in  an  embryo  of  the  Phocccna  conimunis  no  fewer  than 
eight  primitive  nipples  (the  adult  animal  has  only  two),  and 
four  in  embryos  of  Alonodon  monoccros  and  GlobiocepJiabis 
melas.  The  conclusion  arrived  at  is  that  the  ancestors  of 
these  species  possessed  more  nipples  than  the  adult  members 
of  the  species  do  now,  and  some  of  these  are  reproduced  in 
the  embryo  and  young. 


402 


THE   CHILD 


Dr  L.  Laloy^  thinks  it  probable  that  'the  reduction  in  the 
number  of  nipples  stands  in  relation  with  the  diminution  of 
the  number  of  young  born  at  one  time,'  and  suggests  that 
polymastic  women  may  give  birth  more  frequently  than  others 
to  twins.  With  Klaatsch  he  attributes  the  persistence  of  the 
pectoral  pair  of  nipples  alone  in  the  primates  and  some  other 
animals  to  tree-climbing,  and  the  assumption  of  the  vertical 
posture — such  a  position  rendering  easier  and  more  comfort- 
able the  transportation  and  suckling  of  the  young.  This 
atavistic  peculiarity  can  be  inherited — the  statistics  of  Leich- 
tenstein  show  7.6  per  cent  of  heredity — and  of  107  cases  99 
occurred  on  the  thorax,  5  under  the  arm-pits,  2  on  the  back, 
and  I  each  on  the  shoulder  and  the  outside  of  the  thigh. 

Sexual  Perversions. — 'Psycho-Sexual  Degenerations'  have 
been  discussed  at  length  by  many  recent  writers— Moll,  Krafft- 
Ebing,  etc.  Silvio  Venturi,  in  a  large  volume  of  general 
summaries  and  original  observations,  deals  with  these 
phenomena  from  a  somewhat  peculiar  point  of  view.  For 
him  onanism  is  a  sort  of  play  preluding  love.  To  cite  his 
own  words,  '  the  onanism  of  early  adolescence  is  the  embryo 
of  what  love  will  be  later,  a  pleasure  of  body  and  mind.'  In 
onanism  the  boy  falls  in  love  with  himself,  and  his  use  of  the 
sexual  organ  is  a  training-school  for  the  future — 'the  youih 
enters  upon  love  of  woman  in  like  manner  as  the  adolescent 
initiated  onanism.'  Love  is  the  altruism,  onanism  the  egoism 
of  sexual  instincts,  according  to  Venturi. 

The  opposite  pole  from  onanism  in  the  young  is  pimping 
in  the  old.  Ferriani,  in  his  study  of  'Cunning  and  Lucky 
Criminals,'  and  Viazzi,  in  his  work  on  sexual  criminals,  have 
recently  emphasised  the  fact  of  the  exercise  of  pimping  by 
women, /rt/-  excellence,  not  alone  for  the  sake  of  emolument 
and  lucre,  or  through  morbid  affection,  material  interest, 
vengeance,  fatuity  (examples  of  which  abound  in  all  ages- 
Greek  nurses,  Martha  in  Faust,  the  Countess  of  Candat  in 
Bourget's  Cxur  de  Femtne,  Nicia  in  Machiavelli's  Alandragola, 
etc.),  but  as  an  art,  for  art's  sake.  The  large  class  of  old 
women  who  in  all  countries  are  given  to  the  exercise  of 
disinterested  pimi)ing  are,  according  to  Viazzi,  pursuing  the 
art  for  the  love  of  it,  simply  because  they  are  visuals,  in  whom 
has  taken  place  the  substitution  of  an  indirect  for  a  direct 
representation    of    the    sexual   act,    its   preliminaries   and   its 

1  L'Aii/kro/^oh^ic,  1S92,  p.  189. 


THE   CHILD   AND   WOMAN  403 

consequences ;  in  other  words,  woman,  more  easily  than  man 
(who,  as  many  facts  show,  enjoys  the  sexual  embrace  more, 
and  is  more  sensible  of  the  enjoyments  of  physical  love)  is  able 
to  separate  the  idea  and  the  image  from  the  action,  and,  as 
disinterested  pimper,  reaches,  so  to  speak,  'a  social  equivalent 
of  physiological  love'  (664,  p.  20). 

Phylogeiiy  of  Sexual  Abernitions. — The  phylogenutic  and 
ontogenetic  relations  of  sexual  perversions  have  been  studied 
from  the  point  of  view  of  an  adherent  of  the  Lombrosan 
school  by  Penta,  whose  'firm  belief  in  a  criminal  type,  the 
born  criminal,  atavism,  moral  insanity  as  a  disease  per  se^ 
etc.,'  causes  him  at  times  to  exaggerate  and  dogmatise,  but 
many  of  whose  observations  are  keen  and  suggestive.  Penta, 
perhaps  justly  (and  Niicke  seems  to  agree  with  him  on  this 
point),  holds  that  the  history  of  the  various  sexual  aberrations 
shows  that  our  times  are  not  at  all  worse  than  the  early 
centuries  of  huma%  civilisation,  and  notes  the  fact  that  most 
perversions  have  been  at  some  time  or  other  sanctified  by 
religious  sects.  Since  phylogenetically  and  ontogenetically 
human  sexual  intercourse  is  only  'an  enlargement  and  exten- 
sion of  the  union  of  the  zoosperm  and  the  ovulum,  represent- 
ing again  the  conjugation  of  many  infusoria  and  protozoa,'  and 
sexual  pleasure  has  been  developed  from  the  pleasure  of  the 
sense  of  touch,  even  in  the  lowest  forms  of  life  devices  have 
been  provided  for  increasing  and  intensifying  this  pleasure, 
and  for  providing,  in  the  higher  forms  of  life,  mutual  means  of 
attraction  (song,  ornament,  etc.).  Man  is  no  exception  to 
the  rule.  Penta  points  out  many  correspondences :  Among 
primitive  peoples  the  men  are  sometimes  more  ornamented 
and  painted  than  the  women ;  the  preference  of  civilised 
women  even  yet  for  the  brave  man  or  the  soldier,  the  exist- 
ence of  marriage  by  capture  among  certain  savage  peoples,  the 
frequent  yielding  of  woman  to  a  second  suitor,  the  wrestling 
or  fighting  for  a  wife  that  still  survives  among  the  ignorant 
classes  in  some  civilised  communities  ;  all  these  are  parallel  to 
the  struggles  of  animals  in  rut,  and  the  actions  of  females  at 
that  time ;  in  man,  also,  there  still  can  be  detected  the 
element  of  cruelty  and  roughness  that  goes  with  the  mating 
of  some  of  the  animals ;  at  the  time  of  puberty  lawlessness 
and  immorality  increase,  while  with  the  waking  of  love  in 
spring  crimes  of  violence  increase,  and  murder  and  crimes 
against  morals  increase  with  summer;  the  temporary  unions 

27 


404  THE   CHILD 

of  the  animals  find  many  analogues  in  the  brief  unions  among 
some  primitive  peoples,  and  with  early  man,  perhaps,  as  with 
the  brutes,  the  female  was  his  property,  won  and  held  by  him 
against  all  others.  The  author  remarks,  further,  that  '  by 
reason  of  the  struggle  for  existence  heat  could  appear  in 
animals  only  periodically,  and  during  the  short  period  of  its 
existence  the  sexual  pleasure  was  so  violent  as  to  keep  with  it 
traits  of  cruelty ;  but  in  man,  whose  food-relations  kept  on 
improving,  the  sexual  pleasure  began  to  lose  in  violence, 
cruelty  subsided,  and  sexual  selection,  together  with  civil- 
isation, gave  to  customs  connected  with  sexual  intercourse  an 
increasingly  milder  form.'  Penta  believes  that  sexual  aber- 
rations are  mostly  atavistic,  '  a  relapse  into  animal  times,  that 
allows  the  simple  and  older  characters  to  appear ' ;  amid  all  the 
heritage  of  culture  and  civilisation  the  original,  animal  nature 
sometimes  crops  out.  The  early  appearance  of  the  sexual 
impulse  is  itself  atavistic,  since,  as  Spencer  has  pointed  out, 
the  higher  the  species,  the  later  the  period  of  its  appearance. 

Sexual  Inversion  and  Auto-Erotism. — In  a  recent  account 
of  '  Sexual  Inversion  in  Women,'  Mr  Havelock  Ellis  comes  to 
the  following  conclusions,  based  upon  a  wide  acquaintance 
with  the  literature  of  the  subject  and  personal  investigations  : — 
I.  A  slight  degree  of  homosexuality  is  commoner  in  women 
than  in  men,  but  well-marked  and  fully  developed  cases  are 
rarer.  2.  It  shows  itself  with  the  evolution  of  puberty,  and 
may  be  of  peripheral  or  of  central  origin.  3.  The  rudimentary 
kind  of  homosexuality  is  more  common  among  girls  than 
among  boys.  4.  Homosexuality  seems  to  be  on  the  increase 
among  women.    5.  It  is  very  frequent  among  prostitutes  (185). 

In  another  very  suggestive  study  of  'Auto-Erotism'  (186), 
Mr  Ellis  discusses  in  detail  '  the  phenomena  of  spontaneous 
sexual  emotion  generated  in  the  absence  of  an  external  stimulus 
proceeding,  directly  or  indirectly,  from  another  person.'  These 
phenomena  '  range  from  occasional  voluptuous  day-dreams,  in 
v?hich  the  subject  is  entirely  passive,  to  the  perpetual  unashamed 
efforts  at  sexual  self-manipulation  witnessed  among  the  insane,' 
the  typical  form  of  auto-erotism,  however,  being  the  occurrence 
of  the  sexual  orgasm  during  sleep.  Masturbation,  one  of  the 
forms  of  auto-erotism,  is  common  with  many  of  the  lower 
animals,  and  among  many  of  the  lower  races  of  men  practically 
universal  with  both  sexes. 

Day-dreaming  and  solitary  reveries,  again,  induce  a  sort  of 


THE   CHILD   AND   WOMAN  405 

'psychic  onanism,'  which  is  'largely  cultivated  by  refined  and 
imaginative  young  men  and  women,  who  lead  a  chaste  life  and 
would  often  be  repelled  by  masturbation.'  In  these  cases  the 
phenomena  are  largely  normal,  as  is  also  the  occurrence  of  the 
sexual  orgasm  and  loss  of  semen  in  healthy  individuals  during 
sleep,  although  much  of  recent  medico-scientific  writing,  as 
Ellis  remarks,  shows  a  tendency  to  see  more  of  the  abnormal 
in  these  phenomena.  Masturbation  seems  really  to  have  no 
age  limit,  and  is  probably  more  common  in  women  than  in 
men  after  adolescence  ;  at  puberty  and  adolescence,  occasional 
or  frequent  masturbation  is  very  common  in  both  sexes,  but 
the  rSle  of  the  alluring  and  restraining  factors  of  tradition, 
ignorance,  imitation,  etc.,  has  not  yet  been  sufficiently  investi- 
gated to  enable  us  to  determine  with  exactness  the  relative  sex- 
frequency.  To  these  opinions  Ellis  adds  further  that  the 
frequency  of  masturbation  in  the  pubertal  period  and  during 
adolescence  is  probably  less  than  is  commonly  believed,  while 
the  results  of  the  saner  studies  of  the  last  quarter  of  a  century 
have  cleared  away  much  of  the  exaggeration  of  the  writers  who 
followed  in  the  wake  of  Tissot,  whose  treatise  on  '  onanism ' 
appeared  in  1760,  and  have  created  an  interminable  list  of 
'  supposed  symptoms  and  results  of  masturbation,'  almost  all 
the  ills  of  human  flesh  and  spirit  being  credited  to  this  vice. 
The  psychiatrists,  however,  recognise  still  in  masturbation  a 
fertile  cause  of  psychic  anomalies,  rather  more,  perhaps,  than 
the  facts  warrant.  As  a  'natural  result  of  unnatural  circum- 
stances,' masturbation,  when  not  carried  to  excess,  does  less 
good,  and  perhaps  not  more  harm,  than  'sexual  intercourse 
practised  with  the  same  frequency  in  the  same  conditions  of 
general  health  and  age  and  circumstances,'  to  cite  the  opinion 
of  Sir  James  Paget,  as  improved  by  Ellis.  The  '  nasty  practice,' 
however,  ought  to  be  exceedingly  rare  in  normal  individuals  en- 
joying healthy  physical  and  mental  life  and  right  social  niilieu  ; 
while,  as  regards  auto-erotic  phenomena,  in  the  widest  sense, 
'  we  are  concerned,  not  with  a  form  of  insanity,  not  even  neces- 
sarily with  a  form  of  depravity,  but  with  the  inevitable  by-play 
of  that  mighty  instinct  on  which  the  animal  creation  rests.' 

It  may  be  that  Mr  Ellis  takes  too  lenient  a  view  of 
some  of  the  phenomena  of  auto-erotism,  but  he  is  much 
more  to  be  trusted  than  some  of  the  'nightmare'  writers  in 
Germany  and  in  English-speaking  countries.  Some  authorities, 
indeed,   go    further    than    Ellis    in    the    revolt    against  the 


4o6  THE   CHILD 

Tissot  school.  Thus  McClanahani  thinks  that  'the  history 
of  masturbation  is  identical  with  the  history  of  the  race,'  and 
holds  that  its  effects  have  been  very  greatly  exaggerated,  that, 
in  fact,  'almost  all  males  have  masturbated  without  seriously 
endangering  their  health.' 

There  is  also  noticeable  a  tendency  to  trace  the  origin 
of  psycho-sexual  and  psychopathic  phenomena  almost  wholly 
to  the  conditions  of  early  life.  According  to  Ur  J.  H. 
Schmuckler  of  Kiew,  onanism  is  more  a  product  of  the 
home  than  of  the  school.  The  warm  bed  of  the  suckling, 
the  irritation  of  the  genital  region  due  to  uncleanliness,  and 
later,  creeping  about,  crawling  on  the  floor;  the  nature  of 
clothing,  the  use  of  alcoholic  drinks,  spiced  foods,  etc., 
dancing,  riding,  presence  at  erotic  scenes  and  conversations, 
diseases  of  the  skin,  or  of  the  genital  organs,  imitation,  all 
these  exert  a  powerful  influence  quite  independent  of  school- 
attendance  and  school-life.2 

Dr  Pasquale  Penta,  in  discussing  the  case  of  a  sexual 
invert,  a  man-servant  (the  domestic  profession,  as  Tardieu 
and  Legludic  have  noted,  seems  to  favour  the  development 
of  pederasty,  etc.),  whose  child-life  was  made  miserable  by 
the  violence  of  his  father,  points  out  how  often  'sexual 
inversion  is  the  effect  of  viilieu  and  education  rather  than 
of  any  original  abnormal  sexual  tendency.'  A  boy  or  youth 
of  timid  and  yielding  disposition,  with  the  natural  effect  of  a 
robust  constitution  destroyed  by  the  domination  of  a  tyrannical 
parent,  enters  upon  the  submissive  career  of  a  domestic,  and 
falls  a  victim  easily  to  the  suggestion  of  a  stronger  mind,  his 
own  soul  having  been  atrophied  and  its  original  germs  of 
virility  relegated  to  the  sphere  of  the  unconscious.  Alcoholic 
heredity,  paternal  brutality,  maternal  weakness  and  passivity, 
go  far  towards  accounting  for  the  first  appearance  of  homo- 
sexual tendencies,  and  the  disappearance  of  the  normal 
heterosexual  phenomena. 

Luzenberger^  emphasises  the  disposition  to  sexual  psycho- 
pathy resulting  from  forced  attempts  at  coitus  during  child- 
hood, and  from  association  with  sexual  pains  suffered  in  the 
early  years  of  life.  That  with  individuals  at  all  predisposed  to 
degeneracy  these  factors  exert  a  very  powerful  role  is  evident 

1  N.  Y.  Med.Joiini.,  Oct.  9,  1897. 

2  Arch.f.  Kindcrhlkde.,  189S. 

3  Neurol.  Cbl.,  1897. 


THE   CHILD   AND   WOMAN  407 

from  the  statistics  of  criminology.  'Hie  sexual  precocity  of 
criminals  and  many  degenerates  is  well  known,  although  the 
lack  of  absolute  certainty  as  to  the  corresponding  figures  in 
the  case  of  normal  individuals  weakens  the  case  against  the 
abnormal.  Taken  altogether,  it  may  be  said  that  sexual 
abnormality,  like  sexual  precocity,  is,  in  man  especially,  a 
characteristic  that  detiacts  from  his  rounded  perfection.  As 
Dr  Marro  well  says:  'The  precocity  of  enjoyment  of  sexual 
pleasures  deprives  man  of  one  of  the  most  powerful  factors  of 
his  civil  character— the  feeling  of  conquering  the  heart  of 
woman  with  the  full  development  and  perfection  of  his  physical 
and  moral  qualities — a  feeling  which  serves  to  enkindle  youth 
and  forms  the  most  powerful  spring  to  guide  man  on  the  road 
of  work  and  of  duty '  (404,  p.  300). 

Here,  if  ever,  the  precept  holds,  '  being  a  child  must  not 
hinder  becoming  a  man;  becoming  a  man  must  not  hinder 
being  a  child.' 

Development  of  the  Sextial  Instinct. — In  his  book  on  the 
psychology  of  the  sexual  instinct  (552),  Dr  Joanny  Roux,  of 
the  Lunatic  Asylum  at  Lyons,  has  discussed  in  brief  terms  the 
evolution  of  love,  the  history  of  which  is  a  tale  of  increasing 
durability  with  increase  in  complexity  of  the  composing 
elements.  All  manifestations  of  the  sexual  instinct  originate 
in  a  causal  peripheral  stimulus,  which,  after  nervous  action,  is 
consciously  perceived  and  subjected  to  co-operative  influences 
on  the  part  of  the  various  senses,  becoming  more  and  more 
complex  as  the  simpler  nervous  sub-stratum  is  left  farther 
behind,  then  crystallising  and  systematising  itself  by  aid  of  all 
the  arts  and  devices  of  mankind  for  the  complete  utiilising  of 
the  feelings  and  instincts  of  the  race  and  of  the  individual — 
association,  admiration,  affection,  love  of  approbation,  flattery, 
pleasure  of  conquest  and  desire  of  power,  modesty,  curiosity, 
honour,  fidelity,  etc.  Roux  rejects  the  opinion  (shared  by 
Krafft-Ebing,  Beaunis,  Delbccuf,  Tarchanoff  and  others)  that 
the  sexual  instinct  has  its  sole  basis  in  the  need  of  functioning 
of  the  genital  organs,  that  the  primum  movens  of  the  sexual 
need  is  the  repletion  of  the  seminal  vesicles. 

The  sexual  appetite  is  simply  the  demand  of  an  organ  to 
function,  and  is  satisfied  with  sexual  connection ;  sexual 
hunger  (the  need  which  the  young  girl  feels  throughout  her 
entire  organism,  yet  is  able  neither  to  localise  nor  to  compre- 
hend) is  'satisfied  only  in  the  union  of  two  beings  chosen  by 


408  THE  CHILD 

virtue  of  mysterious  affinities.'  The  sexual  appetite  arouses 
desire  only ;  from  sexual  hunger  springs  love.  Hence  it  is 
that  'we  love  with  all  our  body.' 

In  the  phylogenetic  history  of  man's  development,  according 
to  Roux,  the  olfactive  sensations,  the  earliest  to  be  dififerenti 
ated  from  the  general  sensibility  (a  stage  of  evolution  still 
present  in  the  reptiles  and  amphibia),  were  naturally  the  first 
to  be  associated  with  the  sexual  need.  In  man  visual  sensations 
have  dethroned  the  olfactive  in  their  association  with  the 
sexual  need,  as  art  abundantly  proves.  Less  important  than 
sensations  of  sight  in  relation  to  sexual  need  are  auditory  sen- 
sations (in  certain  insects  and  birds  they  exert  the  first  role), 
which,  however,  as  the  correlations  of  music  and  sexual 
erethism  in  man  demonstrate,  are  very  powerful.  The  gusta- 
tive  sensations  (in  the  normal  man  nearly  nil)  are  so  closely 
bound  up  with  tactile  sensations,  that  with  the  kiss  on  the  lips 
it  is  difficult  to  separate  gustation  from  the  general  and  par- 
ticular contact  of  bodies  and  organs.  In  a  certain  sense  love 
is  the  sacrifice  of  the  individual  to  the  species,  and  '  chastity 
the  revenge  of  the  individual  upon  the  species,'  the  multifarious 
associations  of  both  making  them  what  they  are  and  have 
been.  The  alliance  of  hate  and  love  represents  the  revolt  of  the 
individual,  the  royalty  of  woman,  the  spirit  of  the  race ;  modesty 
and  shame  the  favouring  of  intellectual  at  the  expense  of  physical 
selection ;  marriage  the  recognition  of  the  right  of  the  offspring 
to  parental  care  until  they  have  reached  the  adult  state. 

Very  rarely.  Miss  Lombroso  holds  (369,  p.  102),  are  young 
children  susceptible  of  real  love ;  they  are  too  egotistic  and 
wrapped  up  in  themselves,  although  their  passion  and  grief  do 
sometimes  show  forth  a  potentiality  of  love,  very  latent,  how- 
ever, in  many  cases.  Precocious  loves  in  early  childhood  are 
*a  sort  of  hyperesthesia  of  affectivity,  anomalous  if  not  patho- 
logical.' Of  such  sort  are  De  Goncourt's  'Cherie';  Renan  with 
his  '  Noemi ' ;  Tolstoi  with  his  *  Sonia ' ;  Marie  Baskirtseff  with 
her  'Duke  H.';  Rousseau  with  the  girls  '  Vulson'  and  'Goton'; 
Berlioz  with  '  Miss  Stella  Gautier.'  Miss  Lombroso,  however,  is 
too  sweeping  in  her  conclusions,  and  the  development  of  the 
feeling  of  love  is,  no  doubt,  more  common  in  young  children 
than  she  is  willing  to  concede,  seeing,  as  she  does,  'a  pro- 
vidential law'  in  the  fact  that  'all  children  who  present  an  ex- 
aggerated affectivity  are  anomalous  or  die  early'  (369,  p.  113). 

Sexual  Precocity. — Dr  J.  L.  Morse,  in  a  recent  brief  review  of 


THE   CHILD   AND   WOMAN  409 

the  literature  of  '  Precocious  Maturity '  in  little  girls,  comes  to 
the  following  conclusions  (based  upon  the  accounts  given  of  some 
fifty  cases) :  i.  Precocious  maturity  is  a  physiological  congenital 
anomaly  of  development,  and  is  not  causally  connected  with 
rickets,  hydrocephalus,  lipomatosis,  etc.  2.  Menstruation 
(most  often  appearing,  accompanied  by  ovulation,  in  the  first 
two  years)  is  never  the  first  symptom,  but  is  always  preceded 
and  accompanied  by  others.  3.  The  attributes  of  maturity 
are  not  all  acquired  before  the  age  of  seven  or  eight  years.  4. 
Menstruation  may  continue  as  long  as  when  it  begins  at  the 
normal  time.  5.  Sexual  desire  is  soon  developed,  and  preg- 
nancy may  occur  early.  6.  The  mental  development  of  such 
children  is  as  a  rule  not  as  rapid  as  the  physical  and  sexual, 
though  some  do  show  the  mental  characteristics  and  tastes  of 
far  older  children,  or  even  of  adults.  7.  Some  signs  of  the 
condition  (more  than  average  weight,  large  breasts,  advanced 
state  of  genital  organs,  hair  on  vulva,  or  menstruation)  were 
always  manifest  at  birth.  8.  The  increase  in  height  and  weight 
(above  the  normal  average  in  all  cases  observed)  was  rapid. 
9.  The  other  pubertal  characteristics  observed  varied  in  the 
order  of  their  appearance  and  in  their  relative  development, 
and  sometimes  preceded,  sometimes  followed,  the  first  menstrua- 
tion. Many  further  details  as  to  precocious  maturity  are  given 
by  Ploss,  who  cites  forty-two  cases,  from  all  over  the  world,  of 
physical  and  sexual  maturity,  menstruation,  coitus,  pregnancy, 
child-bearing,  etc.,  during  childhood  (498,  I.  p.  244). 

The  mammary  glands  have  been  known  to  function  even  in 
infancy.  Such  a  case  is  reported  by  Dr  J.  B.  Grover,  of  Peck- 
ville,  Pa.i  The  subject  is  a  robust  child  (born  Jan.  28,  1898) 
'having  the  general  appearance  of  children  of  her  age,'  and  the 
secretion  of  milk  (microscopically  identical  with  mother's  milk) 
is  'so  abundant  that  the  mother  is  obliged  to  pump  the  milk  out 
at  least  once  daily,'  the  child  being  fretful  until  this  is  done.  The 
secretion  began  to  appear  when  the  child  was  one  week  old. 

Among  the  factors  which  make  for  sexual  precocity 
Dencker  notes  (161):  The  social  environment  of  modern  city 
life  (Rousseau's  saying  :  '  Cities  are  the  grave  of  man  '  applies 
here  also),  with  its  excitements  and  vices,  its  degeneration- 
phenomena,  its  nervous  tension  and  its  '  hurry  to  live,'  mentally 
and  physically ;  the  increase  in  the  variety  of  foods  and  drinks 
(tea,  coffee,  wines  and  liquors,  spices  and  condiments  innu- 
'  MeJ.  Kcc,  N.Y.,  July  23,  1S98. 


410 


THE  CHILD 


merable,  gastronomic  titillation  par  excellence)  \  the  family  life 
of  parents  and  the  physical  and  mental  education  of  the  child 
in  the  early  years  of  life  (noises  and  unusual  acts,  artificial  dis- 
turbances of  nerves,  pampering  and  weakening  by  indulgences, 
parents'  awkward  and  unsatisfactory  answers  to  childish  inter- 
rogatories) ;  school-life  and  associations  (well  termed  by 
physicians  '  the  fearful  years ')  with  their  restraint  and  torture 
of  body  and  mind,  unnatural  forcing  of  attention  and  interest, 
seeming  decrease  in  the  cliild's  natural  intelligence  (with  here 
and  there  a  forced  growth  in  mind  or  body),  and  their  only 
compensations  to  the  child  dangerous  dreams  of  the  fancy  and 
plays  of  the  imagination ;  that  whereon  the  child  is  allowed  to 
feed  his  soul — careless  conversation  of  parents,  elders  or 
servants,  bridleless  talk  of  older  companions,  impure  and 
suggestive  jokes,  stories  and  pictures,  certain  Bible  verses, 
newspaper  items — all  these  constituting  a  mass  of  suggestions 
that,  together  with  the  physical  condition  of  the  child,  hasten 
the  outburst  of  sexual  life.  A  vast  amount  of  evidence  as  to 
the  sexual  life  of  the  country  folk  of  Germany,  and  the  causes 
of  youthful  corruption  and  depravity,  is  to  be  found  in  the 
published  results  of  the  investigations  of  pastors  Wittenberg 
and  Hiickstadt,  whose  pages  are  a  sad  record  of  that  parental 
neglect  which  is  the  first  great  cause  of  child  crime  (688). 

Woman's  precocity  of  development  is  recorded  of  old-time. 
Dencker,  with  some  venturesomeness,  arranges  the  parallelism 
of  development  in  the  human  male  and  female  as  follows 
(i6i,  p.  27):— 


P 

arallel  Years  of  Life. 

Man  . 

1-3 

5 

6 

7 

9 

10 

II 

12 

13 

Woman    . 

1-3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

IT 

Man  . 

14 

15 

17 

18 

20 

22 

24 

26 

27 

Woman    . 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20-21 

Man  . 

28 

30 

32 

34 

36 

3S 

40 

41 

42 

Woman    . 

22 

23 

24 

25 

26 

27 

28-30 

31 

32 

Man  .       . 

43 

44 

45 

46 

48 

50 

52 

54 

56 

Woman    . 

33 

34 

35 

36 

37 

3S 

39 

40 

41 

Man  . 

5« 

60 

61 

62 

63 

64 

65 

66 

67 

Woman    . 

42 

43 

44 

45-47 

48 

49 

50-65 

66 

67 

Man  . 

68 

69 

70 

71 

72 

Woman    . 

68 

69 

70 

71 

72 

THE  CHILD   AND   WOMAN 


411 


From  this  it  appears  that  during  the  first  three  (or  four) 
years  of  life,  the  period  of  early  childhood,  no  marked  differ- 
ences of  development  between  male  and  female  occur.  After 
that,  however,  a  precocious  development  in  girls  occurs,  giving 
them  a  lead  over  the  boys,  which  increases  from  the  2-4  years 
at  the  attainment  of  puberty  to  about  10  at  middle  age,  and 
even  15  later  on  in  life — a  levelling  up,  however,  becoming 
very  noticeable  at  60,  while  at  about  72  the  sexes  are  together 
again.  Corresponding  to  the  undifferentiated  period  of  early 
childhood,  we  have  the  undifferentiated  (comparatively,  at 
least)  period  of  old  age — the  period  '  de  retour '  in  more  senses 
than  one.  These  phenomena  are  explained  by  the  two  bio- 
logical laws  of  rapidity  and  slowness  of  development.  The 
reversion  is  equally  rapid  with  the  evolution;  the  slower  the 
evolution  has  proceeded,  the  longer  the  period  of  culmination. 

The  parallelism  of  the  various  periods  of  life  Dencker 
considers  to  be  : — 


Periods. 


First  Childhood    . 
Boyhood  and  Girlhood 
Pubertal  Development  . 
Prime  ..... 
Middle  Age  .... 
Epoch  of  Involution 
Extinction  of  Reproductive  Power 
Extinction  of  Sexual  Impulse 
Old  Age       .... 


In  Man — 
Years. 


1-7 
7-15 
15-20 
20-32 

32-45 
45-62 
60-62 
62-75 
65 


In  Woman- 
Years. 


1-6 
6-13 
13-15 
15-24 
24-35 
35-44 
43-45 
45-48 

65 


Dencker,  it  will  be  seen,  makes  'middle  age'  in  man  begin 
where,  as  we  saw  previously,  his  real  '  infancy '  has  hardly 
ended. 

Puberty. — The  pubertal  epoch,  in  both  sexes,  is  naturally 
a  time  of  very  great  stress,  and  innumerable  physical  and  psy- 
chical perturbations  and  abnormities  find  there  a  rich  soil 
for  development.  The  opinion  of  Marro  that  the  period  of 
greatest  growth  is  also  the  period  of  minimum  power  to  resist 
disease  and  sickness,  shared  also  by  Combe,  of  Lausanne,  is 
opposed  by  Key,  Hertel,  Hartwell,  and  other  more  recent 
authorities  in  America,  as  detailed  in  Burke's  comprehensive 


412  THE   CHILD 

article  on  '  The  Growth  of  Children  in  Height  and  Weight ' 
(91,  p.  290).  Much  of  the  divergence  of  opinions,  however, 
may  be  traced  to  inexactness  in  the  delimitation  of  the 
pubertal  periods  and  lack  of  agreement  in  the  citation  of 
diseases,  etc. 

The  existence  of  a  special  puberty-psychosis  is  denied  by 
Wille,  whose  conclusion  is  based  upon  the  study  of  135 
adolescents  (girls  65,  boys  70),  among  whom  he  has  met  with 
all  the  common  forms  of  mental  disease  (76  cases  being  simply 
mental  affections,  while  59  cases  were  accompanied  by  organic 
lesions).  The  most  frequently  occurring  troubles  were  mania 
(29  cases)  and  melancholia  (21  cases),  paranoia  (4  cases), 
being  very  rare,  furnishing  indeed  but  one  really  typical  case — 
a  youth  of  20  years.  It  would  seem,  however,  that  while 
there  is  no  special  psychosis  of  puberty,  the  process  of  pubertal 
development  does  give  to  the  psychoses  occurring  during  that 
period  a  special  impress,  or  modify  them  in  particular 
fashion  (683). 

Dr  Marro  recognises  three  pubertal  stages  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  human  being,  viz.,  (a)  preparatory  stage  ;  (/^)  stage 
of  accelerated  development ;  (c)  stage  of  completion.  The 
first  stage  is  characterised,  seemingly,  by  an  arrest  of  growth  in 
stature,  nature  seeking,  as  it  were,  to  gather  strength  for  the 
next  period.  It  is  marked  also  by  the  first  signs  of  the  greater 
development  of  the  internal  and  external  genital  organs,  and 
the  first  appearance  of  the  pubic  hairs  ;  by  a  certain  improve- 
ment in  the  higher  psychic  attributes  (attention,  reflexion, 
judgment,  etc.),  and  by  an  improvement  likewise  in  social 
conduct  as  compared  with  previous  years.  The  second  and 
more  critical  period  is  one  of  more  rapid  growth  in  stature, 
vital  capacity,  etc.,  and  by  marked  evolution  of  the  physical 
sexual  characters,  and  the  great  growih  in  stature  and  weight 
seems  to  be  accompanied  by  an  arrest  of  functional  develop- 
ment and  organic  structure,  so  that  a  temporary  weakness  and 
lowering  of  the  power  of  resistance  takes  place  in  the  physical 
and  moral  faculties  of  the  adolescent.  This  period  stands  next 
to  first  childhood  in  its  minimum  power  of  resistance,  revealing 
itself  also  in  instability  and  impropriety  of  character.  The 
period  of  greatest  growth  is  thus  the  period  of  great  physical 
weakness  and  inability  to  resist  disease  for  both  sexes.  During 
this  period,  however,  the  foundations  of  later  individuality  and 
psychic  differentiation  and  consistency  which  mature  in   the 


THE   CHILD   AND   WOMAN  413 

third  period  begin  to  be  laid.  In  this  third  period  occurs  the 
greatest  assimilation  of  materials  and  the  inauguration  of  the 
process  of  elaboration,  and  the  evolution  of  individual  differ- 
ences, and  the  face  reflects  the  character-transformation  that 
is  going  on.  A  new  being  has,  in  fact,  arisen,  or  is  arising, 
and  whatever  of  genius  is  hereafter  to  be  revealed  in  all  its 
fulness  lets  flash  a  spark  here  and  there.  Now  woman  shows 
what  Venturi  calls  her  two  undoubted  traits  of  genius — her 
somatic  beauty  and  her  gift  of  seduction.  Her  whole  being  is 
illuminated,  her  eyes  speak  and  all  her  motions  are  eloquence. 
She  feels  and  exercises  her  right  to  attention,  admiration,  love. 
Her  soul  now  receives  the  repose  of  her  sex  after  the  disturb- 
ance of  the  first  menstrual  flow.  The  young  man  too  is 
flooded  with  innovations  physical  and  psychical.  The  agitation 
of  earlier  years  settles  into  calm,  thoughtlessness  changes  to 
action.  He  feels  his  strength  and  prepares  to  go  forth  to 
conquer  and  to  love.  The  regularity  that  betokens  fecund 
activity  makes  its  appearance  and  the  highest  intelligence 
dawns  in  the  mind. 

The  peculiar  change  that  often  takes  place  in  the  individual 
after  the  establishment  of  puberty  has  been  noted  by  many 
writers,  ancient  and  modern,  and  figures  in  the  proverbs  and 
folk-wit  of  all  lands.  'It  is  a  fact  of  daily  observation,'  says 
Dr  Marro,  '  that  boys  who  manifest  the  most  ungovernable 
temper  and  pass  through  a  period  of  maximum  restlessness  so 
that  they  seem  to  promise  nothing  good  at  all,  showing,  instead, 
all  the  characteristics  of  moral  insanity,  change  their  character, 
as  if  by  magic,  as  soon  as  the  pubertal  epoch  is  over,  and  take 
on  firmness,  aptitude  and  propensity  to  work.' 

The  '  dawn  of  intelligence '  is  a  very  ancient  figure  of 
speech,  both  in  the  Old  World  and  in  the  New.  Miss  Alice  C. 
Fletcher,  writing  of  tlie  Omaha  Indians,  with  whom  and  with 
whose  language  she  has  had  a  long  and  intimate  acquaintance, 
says  (2 1 1,  p.  333):— 

'  "  Wa  zhi"-ska  "  is  the  word  which  designates  the  time  when 
a  youth,  having  passed  the  period  of  childhood,  has  reached  the 
stage  when  he  can  enter  upon  a  season  of  fasting  and  prayer  in 
order  to  secure  a  vision.  The  mind  of  the  child  is  said  to  be 
dark  ;  he  is  like  one  in  the  night,  unable  to  distinguish  objects  ; 
as  he  grows  older,  light  begins  to  dawn,  and  when  he  can 
distinctly  remember  and  can  place  in  order  the  sequence  of 
events  of  which  he  has  been  cognisant,  then  his  mind  is  said 


414  THE   CHILD 

to  be  becoming  "  white,"  and  he  is  approaching  the  suitable 
mental  condition  to  enter  upon  the  rite  which  may  bring  him 
into  personal  relations  with  Waka°'-da,  as  manifested  in  con- 
crete form  through  the  medium  of  the  vision.  The  use  of  the 
word  wa-zhi"-ska  to  indicate  this  period  in  the  life  of  a  man  is 
significant  in  view  of  the  meaning  of  the  word  itself  and  of  the 
importance  to  the  man  of  the  rite  he  is  about  to  practise.' 

In  Arabic  *  maidenhood '  and  *  the  beginning  of  morning  ' 
are  often  poetically  expressed  by  the  same  word.  According 
to  Drs  Barbaud  and  Lef^vre,  in  their  study  of  puberty  in 
woman,  with  the  first  menstruation,  what  was  before  the 
sketch  becomes  'a  little  woman.'  She  who  fell  asleep  a  child 
wakes  up  a  woman.  The  modest  chrysalis  of  yesterday  has 
changed  into  the  brilliant  butterfly  of  to-day. 

The  'making  of  men'  and  the  'making  of  women,'  the 
ceremonies  of  adolescence  and  puberty  among  primitive 
peoples,  concerning  which  many  details  are  given  in  Floss's 
encyclopaedic  volumes  on  Woman  and  the  Child,  and  in  the 
extensive  periodical  literature  of  the  subject,  have  recently 
again  attracted  the  attention  of  the  psychologists  and 
philosophers. 

Dr  A.  H.  Daniels,  in  his  discussion  of  '  Regeneration,' 
shows  how  remarkably  primitive  peoples  and  religious  societies 
of  all  times  and  races  have,  in  their  ceremonies,  initiatory  rites, 
etc.,  recognised  the  '  decided  awakening  of  the  intellectual  life, 
and  the  '  decided  change  in  the  moral  life  '  towards  altruism 
and  social  sexuality  which  take  place  at  puberty — adolescence, 
the  period  of  '  new  life  '  by  nature,  being  also  the  time  for  the 
'  new  life  '  of  the  spirit.  President  Hall,  in  his  discussion  of 
'Initiations  into  Adolescence,'  has  also  emphasised  the  im- 
portance of  puberty-lore  for  child-study,  while  numerous  lesser 
writers  have  followed  in  the  footsteps  of  Dr  W.  H.  Burnham's 
earlier  article  on  '  The  Study  of  Adolescence,'  a  psychological 
interpretation  of  the  truth  contained  in  Rousseau's  epigram, 
'  we  are  born  twice — once  to  exist  and  again  to  live  ;  once  as  to 
species  and  again  with  regard  to  sex'  (96,  p.  174). 

Dr  Antonio  Marro,  whose  volume  on  '  Puberty  in  Man  and 
Woman,  studied  from  the  point  of  view  of  Anthropology, 
Psychiatry,  Pedagogy  and  Sociology'  contains  a  mine  of 
scientific  facts  and  information  on  all  aspects  of  the  subject, 
has  more  recently  published  a  brief  article  on  '  The  Pubertal 
Epoch  in  Folk-UseandFolk  Custom,' in  which  are  summarised 


THE   CHILU   AND   WOMAN  415 

some  of  the  most  noteworthy  folk-usages  in  connection  with 
the  transition  of  the  human  being  from  a  Hfe  which,  especially 
with  civilised  peoples,  is  more  or  less  parasitic,  to  one  that  is 
more  or  less  independent  and  altruistic.  Marro  points  out 
how  much,  even  with  the  institution  of  the  public  school,  etc., 
we  have  lost  in  comparison  with  the  savage  and  the  barbarian 
ill  the  social  appreciation  of  puberty  and  its  significance. 
About  the  only  relic  of  the  old  initiation  ceremonies  is  military 
service,  which,  in  many  countries,  takes  the  male,  towards  the 
close  of  the  transition  to  mature  youth,  and  teaches  him  a  very 
special  and  not  very  useful  art,  and  on  the  moral  side  a  similarly 
equivocal  obedience  to  authority ;  all  the  civic  virtues,  family 
life  (upon  which  the  State  depends)  even,  are  ignored,  injured 
even,  fitness  to  march  and  to  fight  being  the  one  end  and  aim 
held  in  view  all  too  often.  The  initiation  into  civil  life  has 
not  kept  pace  with  the  growth  of  culture.  We  retain  somewhat 
the  primitive  recognition  of  the  puberty  of  the  body,  but 
neglect,  as  primitive  peoples  did  not,  the  puberty  of  the  mind, 
of  the  soul.  And,  with  us,  girls  are  much  worse  off  than  boys. 
Woman  and  the  Child. — '  Women  and  Children ' — the  phrase 
ran  glibly  from  the  tongues  of  the  ancients,  as  it  continues  to 
do  from  the  tongues  and  pens  of  many  moderns,  with  no  real 
consciousness  of  the  deep  significance  of  such  a  linking  to- 
gether. Peasant's  jest,  gibe  of  soldier,  sarcasm  of  philosopher, 
bachelor's  witticism,  have  for  ages  taught  the  world  to  believe 
that  women  are  like  children  in  being  weak  and  'not-man.' 
Mr  Crawley's  detailed  account  of  *  Sexual  Taboo '  informs  us 
in  what  manner  men  have  written  down  women  as  'weaker 
vessels,'  socially,  politically,  religiously,  extending  the  dictum 
of  their  inferiority  even  to  the  next  world  at  times,  and  more 
than  once  denying  them  the  possession  of  a  human  soul,  while, 
on  the  other  hand.  Professor  Mason's  IVoman's  Share  in 
Primitive  Culture  reveals  to  us  how  much  of  the  material  art 
and  science,  by  virtue  of  which  the  race  has  risen  from  the 
lowest  barbarism  to  the  highest  culture,  is  due  to  the  thinking 
brain  and  the  labouring  hand  of  woman.  Indeed,  in  his 
multiform  recapitulation  to-day,  the  child  is  what  he  is  by  reason 
of  the  past  represented  by  his  mother,  the  first  poet  and  the 
first  priest,  the  first  food-bringer,  weaver,  skin-dresser,  potter, 
beast  of  burden,  jack-at-all-trades,  artist,  linguist,  founder  of 
society  and  patron  of  religion,  for  in  many,  if  not  in  all  these 
forms  of  human  activity,  man  has  simply  followed  the  elde 


4i6 


THE   CHILD 


woman.  There  is  ample  justification,  therefore,  for  the 
panegyric  of  Reclus  upon  woman,  to  whom  'mankind  owes 
all  that  has  made  us  men,'  and  who  was  '  the  creator  of  the 


^mtm^' 


THE   LATE   CHIEF    'VANISHING   SMOKE,    OF  THE   MOHAWKS   OF  THE 
GRAND    RIVER,    ONTARIO,    CANADA. 

(From  /kc/.  Proz'.  Arch<^ol.  A/us.,  Oniario,  1898.)    The  face  illustrates  the 
resemblance  of  the  sexes  in  old  age. 

primordial  elements  of  civilisation'  (529,  p.  51).  Woman, 
who  covered  her  unborn  child  with  her  own  body,  was  the  first 
architect ;  woman,  who  spared  her  own  offsprin-g,  *  the  mother 


THE   CHILD   AND   WOMAN  417 

of  the  pastoral  art ' ;  woman,  who  ripened  the  fruit  within  her 
own  womb,  the  first  agriculturist.  Not  merely,  then,  as  being 
weak,  does  woman  resemble  the  child,  but  as  being  in  very 
truth  ihe/o//s  et  on'go  of  humanity.  The  pride  of  the  male  in 
ages  of  militarism  and  masculine  authority,  forgetting  the 
times  of  matriarchy  and  the  political  genius  of  woman,  still 
easily  discernible,  has  obscured  the  original  nearness  of  man  and 
woman,  exaggerated  the  differences  between  the  sexes,  many  of 
them  the  result  of  social  circumstances  and  adaptations,  and 
shut  its  eye  to  the  inevitable  rapprochetnent  which  was  bound  to 
set  in  when  the  victory  of  peace  and  industrialism  over  war  and 
military  conquest  began  to  assert  itself. 

The  difference  between  the  sexes  (in  some  of  the  lower 
classes  of  animals  the  distinctions  are  practically  nil  or  the 
female  is  more  favoured,  as  among  the  termites,  cochineal- 
insect,  etc.,  and  many  fishes,  etc.)  increases  with  the  rise  in 
the  scale  and  progress  of  animal  development  (the  superiority 
of  the  male  becoming  more  marked  from  the  birds  up),  reaches 
its  acme  in  man  and  seems  with  him  to  increase  with  civilisa- 
tion and  culture.  Some  of  the  exceptions  and  limitations  to 
this  theory  are  well  discussed  in  Havelock  Ellis's  Ma7i  and 
JFonian,  from  which  we  learn  that  woman,  because  she  repre- 
sents the  race-type  of  the  future  humanity  better  than  man,  is 
already  shaping  man  in  her  image  ;  physically,  mentally,  even 
socially  and  industrially  woman  has  been  leading  man  on,  and 
feminisation,  in  the  proper  sense  of  that  term,  is  one  of  the 
marked  tendencies  of  our  modern  complex  civilisation.  The 
smaller  and  smaller  ro/e  of  militarism  (the  effect  of  which, 
m  all  ages,  has  been  to  divert  man  from  the  womanly  type), 
and  the  increasing  industrialism  of  modern  civilisation 
('  the  industries  belonged  primitively  to  women  and  they 
tend  to  make  men  like  women '),  together  with  the 
innumerable  facilities  for  nutrition  and  the  increasing  con- 
veniences of  locomotion  and  human  activities  in  general,  all 
tend  towards  an  approximation  of  man  and  woman,  which 
represents  the  highest  effort  of  the  race  to  make  the  best  of 
life  in  all  its  varieties  and  vicissitudes.  If  nature  made  little 
difference,  in  many  respects,  between  the  savage  man  and 
woman  in  their  circumscribed  milieu,  she  is  assuredly  drawing 
them  together  again,  after  centuries  of  artificial  and  accidental 
divergence,  in  the  new,  illimitable  environment  of  modern 
culture. 


4i8 


THE   CHILD 


Chief  Sexual  Differences. — The  sexual  differences,  physical, 
physiological  and  psychical,  have  been  studied  by  many  inves- 
tigators from  Ackerman  in  1788  and  Burdach  in  1S26-1840, 
down  to  the  present  time;  the  best  general  summary  is  to  be 
found  in  Havelock  Ellis's  Alan  and  Woman.  The  following 
list,  compiled  from  numerous  authorities,  contains  some  of  the 
chief  differences  observed. 

In  this  list  the  characteristics  marked*  aie  those,  among 
others,  which  woman  seems  to  possess  more  or  less  in  common 
with  the  child,  and  which  have  made  possible  the  theory  of 
the  resemblance  physically,  physiologically  and  psychically  of 
the  child-type  and  the  female  type  now  held  by  many  excellent 
authorities. 


Characteristic. 

In  Woman  as  Compared  with  Man. 

I. 

*Abdomen 

Size  relatively  greater 

Anus    .... 

Situated  farther  back 

*Apophyses    . 

Less  prominent 

*Arches  (supraciliary) 

Less  developed 

*Arms    .... 

Shorter 

*Articulations 

Less  in  volimie 

*Base  of  skull 

Usually  smaller 

*Beard  .... 

Absent 

Bladder 

Relatively  larger 

*Blood  .... 

Fewer  red  corpuscles 

• 

Less  haemoglobin 

,,.... 

Specific  gravity  less 

*Bones  .... 

Lighter,  more  porous,  thinner 

*Bosses     (parietal      and 

frontal) 

More  marked 

*Brain    .... 

Weight  relatively  superior 

Breasts 

Distance  between  nipples  often  less 

Canine  fossa       ,  . 

Shallower 

Carbonic  acid 

Less  eliminated 

*  Cartilages 

More  delicate 

Centre  of  body 

Higher  up 

'Cephalic  index 

More  brachycephalic 

Cerebellum  . 

Relatively  larger 

Chin     .... 

Usually  less  prominent 

Clavicle 

Relatively  longer 

"Condyles  (occipital) 

Smaller 

•Contours  (of  bones,  etc. ) 

Smoother ;  more  delicate 

THE   CHILD   AND   WOMAN 


419 


Characteristic. 

In  Woman  as  Compared  with  Man. 

*Cranial  capacity    . 

Smaller  (absolutely) 

*Cranium 

Lighter,  lower,  more  delicate 

*Crests  .... 

Less  marked  generally 

Crests,  iliac  . 

Higher,  wider 

Curve  (lumbo-?acral) 

More  pronounced 

Ears      .... 

Smaller,  more  delicate,  less  defective 

*  Erect  posture 

Less  removed  from  quadrupedal 

Eyes     .... 

Slightly  smaller  generally 

*  Eyebrows 

Less  marked 

*Face     .... 

Smaller,    relatively    broader,     relatively 

shorter,  lower 

Facial  angle 

Somewhat  more  prognathous 

*Fatness 

Fatter 

Features 

More  delicate 

*Feet     .... 

Smaller,  shorter 

Finger,  index 

Longer 

*  Forehead 

Straighter,  narrower 

*Glabella 

Much  less  developed 

Hair     .... 

More  vigorous  on  head,  less  on  face  and 

body  generally 

,,.... 

Growth  greater  in  pubic  region 

,,.... 

Individual  pubic  hairs  larger 

,,.... 

Baldness  largely  absent 

*Hands .... 

Smaller,  relatively  slightly  shorter 

*Head    .... 

Relatively  longer 

Heart   .... 

Smaller 

♦Height 

Less  generally  (except  ca.  Ii4-i42  )'■«•) 

Hips     .... 

Relatively  larger 

*Inion    .... 

Smaller 

Inter-orbital  distance     . 

Narrower 

Taw       .... 

Smaller 

J,         .         .         .         . 

Angles  decidedly  large 

5  J         .         •         . 

Relatively  smaller  weight 

More  rounded 

Kidneys 

Absolute  weight  somewhat  less 

*Larynx 

Less  developed 

Legs     .... 

Less  straight 

*  Ligaments     . 

More  delicate 

*Liver    .         .         .         . 

Larger  relatively 

Longevity     . 

Greater 

Lungs  .... 

Relatively  somewhat  smaller 

Malar  bone  . 

Edges  smaller 

Malformations 

Rarer 

Mouth  .... 

Wider 

*  Muscles 

More  delicate 

*Muscular  force 

Much  less 

*Navel  .... 

Greater  distance  between  navel  and  pubes 

28 


420 


THE   CHILD 


Characteristic. 

In  Woman  as  Compared  with  Man. 

*Neck    ... 

Relatively  shorter ;  rounder 

Occipital  foramen 

Smaller 

Orbit     .... 

Diameters  smaller 

Oxygen 

Less  absorbed 

Pelvis  .... 

Broader,  more  delicate-,  relatively  shallower 

Perspiration  and  sweat  . 

Less 

Phalanges  (of  foot) 

Shorter 

Pigmentation 

Darker  (?) 

*Prehensility  . 

Greater 

Pressure,  arterial  . 

Less 

Prognathism    (upper 

face) 

Slightly  greater 

Prognathism     (total 

face) 

Greater 

*Pulse    .         . 

Higher 

*Respiration  . 

Less  vital  capacity ;   number  of  respira- 

tions per  minute  slightly  higher 

Ribs      .... 

Straighter,  thinner 

*  Ridges. 

Less  marked 

Shoulders 

More  sloping 

*Sinuses  (frontal)    . 

Less  prominent 

,  *Skin     .... 

More  delicate  and  rosy 

Spinal  column 

Lumbar  portion  longer  and  more  arched 

Spleen 

Larger 

Step     .... 

Shorter 

Sternum 

Relatively  shorter 

Stomach 

Relatively  larger 

*Strength 

Much  less 

Teeth    .... 

Smaller  generally  (?) 

,,        .         . 

Two  upper  mid  incisors  larger 

*  Temperature 

Somewhat  higher 

"Thighs 

Markedly  shorter  and  larger 

Thorax 

Relatively  shorter  and  broader 

Thumb 

Relatively  shorter 

*  Thyroid  gland 

Larger 

Toe  (great)    . 

Relatively  shorter 

*Trunk  .... 

Relatively  longer 

*Tuberosities 

Less  prominent 

Urea     .... 

Less  in  quantity 

Urine   .... 

Absolutely  rather  smaller  in  amount,  rela- 

tively greater  generally 

Venous  system 

Capacity  relatively  larger 

*Weight 

II. 

•Affectability 

Less  (except  ca,  12^-15^  yrs.) 

Greater 

THE   CHILD   AND   WOMAN 


421 


Characteristic. 

In  Woman  as  Compared  witli  Man. 

Alcoholism   . 

Much  less  common 

Ambidextry  . 

More  common 

Anabolism    . 

Very  much  greater 

Appetite 

Smaller  (?)  ^ 

Assimilative  power 

Greater 

Blushing 

Very  much  more  frequent 

*' Breaking      out'      (de- 

structive violence) 

More  common 

Charity 

More  developed 

Colour-sense 

Greater 

Cretinism 

Less  common 

Criminality  (except  pros- 

titution)    . 

Much  less 

Cruelty 

Greater 

Deaf-mutism 

Less  common  generally 

*Destructiveness    (except 

war,  etc.)  . 

Greater 

•Digestion 

More  rapid 

•Diseases 

Scarlet  fever,  scleroderma,  herpes 
mitral  disease,  more  common 

zoster, 

*Disvulnerability    . 

Greater 

*Dreams 

More  common 

Ecstasy 

More  common 

•Emotionality 

Greater 

•Equilibrium 

More  unstable 

Eye-defects  . 

More  common 

•Feelings 

Much  more  in  play 

Genius 

Much  less  common 

•Gluttony 

More  common  (?) 

•Hallucinations 

More  frequent 

Hearing 

More  acute 

•Hunger 

More  frequent 

•Hypnotic    phenomena  . 

More  common 

Hysteria 

More  common 

Idiocy  .... 

Less  frequent 

Imbecility     . 

Less  frequent 

•Impulsiveness 

Greater 

Irascibility    . 

More  common 

•Irritability     . 

More  common 

Katabolism  . 

Very  much  less 

Lefthandedness     . 

More  common 

Manual  dexterity  . 

Less  (except  needle-work,  a  few 
professions) 

special 

Memory 

Better 

Mysticism 

Much  less  frequent 

•Pain     .         .         .         . 

Less  affected 

Passions 

Those  of  weakness  more  common 

422 


THE   CHILD 


Characteristic. 

In  Woman  as  Compared  with  Man. 

Patience 

Greater 

Perception    . 

More  rapid 

Pity      . 

Greater 

*Pouting 

More  common 

*  Precocity 

Greater 

*Ruse     . 

More  frequent 

Sense-judgments   . 

More  accurate  generally 

Sight    .         .         . 

Range  of  sensation   inferior  ;    power  of 
discrimination  slightly  greater 

Smell   . 

Less  keen 

*Speech 

More  fluent,  especially  in  lower  forms 

Speech-defects 

Less  common 

*SuggestibiIity 

Greater 

Suicide 

Less   common ;    methods    passive   more 
commonly 

Tact     . 

Greater 

Taste    . 

More  acute 

Temperament 

Lymphatic ;  changeable 

Touch  . 

Less  keen  (?) 

Variation 

Less  (with  important  exceptions) 

Vice 

Less 

Vitality 

Greater 

*Voice   . 

Higher,  shriller 

*Zymotic  diseases 

More  susceptible 

in. 

*Abstract  thought  . 

More  docile  and  receptive  ;  less  capable 

of  abstraction 

*Acting .... 

Greater  ability  more  frequently  displayed 

AdaptibiHty  . 

Greater 

Art       ...         . 

Less   gifted   in  pure  artistic  impulse  in 

high  culture 

Astrology 

Now  chiefly  supported  by  women 

Business   and    industrial 

capacity     . 

More  industrious,    less  markedly  intelli- 

gent (except  in  the  post-oflice  and  some 

other  special  employs) 

*Conservatism 

Greater 

Conventionality 

Greater 

Cunning 

Greater 

Diplomacy    . 

Greater  (when  allowed  full  scope) 

*Dissimulation 

Greater,  more  frequent 

*Exaggeration 

Often  greater 

Executive  ability 

More  common 

Fiction 

Less  gifted  as  to  quantity  and  versatility 

than  as  to  artistic  power 

THE   CHILD   AND   WOMAN 


423 


Characteristic. 

In  Woman  as  Compared  with  Man. 

"1 

*Imagination  . 

Greater  (among  primitive  peoples) 

*Individuality 

Less  developed 

Intellect 

'  Pure  intellect '  less 

Intuition 

Much  greater 

*Logic   . 

Less 

Mathematics 

More  gifted  than  generally  believed 

Medicine 

More  gifted  than  generally  believed 

Metaphysics . 

Little  gifted 

Music  . 

Little  gifted   as   to  genius  in  inventing 
instrumental  music  and  composition 

Originality    . 

Less 

Painting 

Great  genius  rare 

Poetry 

Highest  genius  rare 

Politics 

Woman's  genius  great 

Religion 

Devotion  greater,  creative  power  much 
less 

Sacrifice 

Instinct  much  greater 

Sculpture 

High  genius  very  rare 

^Simulation    . 

Greater 

Singing 

Genius  greater 

Superstition 

Greater 

Sympathy 

Greater 

Sexual  Differences  in  Childhood. — Professor  Vitale  Vitali,  of 
the  Royal  Lyceum  at  Forli,  has  made  detailed  anthropological- 
pedagogical  investigations  of  303  boys  and  372  girls,  between 
the  ages  of  1 1  and  20  years,  belonging  to  the  region  of  the 
Romagna  in  Italy.  Among  the  conclusions  as  to  sexual 
resemblances  and  differences,  which  Dr  Vitali  arrives  at,  in  this 
very  important  study,  are  the  following: — 

A.  Physical. — i.  In  the  girls  of  the  Romagna  there  is  a 
lack  of  that  post-pubertal  development  which  in  the  boys  seems 
to  grow  out  of  love  for  physical  exercise.  2.  At  all  ages  the 
trunk  (height  sitting)  of  girls  is  longer  than  that  of  boys,  the 
lower  limbs  of  woman,  in  proportion  to  her  stature,  being,  as  is 
well  known,  shorter  than  those  of  man.  3.  While  at  all  ages 
in  the  girls  of  the  Romagna  the  finger  reach  is  greater  than  the 
stature,  the  proportion  of  stature  to  finger-reach  decreases  with 
age,  instead  of  increasing,  as  is  the  case  with  the  boys — a 
difference  which  Professor  Vitali  seems  to  attribute  to  ethnical 
influences  as  well  as  other  facts  connected  with  the  lack  of 
post-pubertal  development.      4.  The  skin  of  girls  is  clearer 


424  THE   CHILD 

than  that  of  boys,  also  the  colour  of  the  hair  and  eyes,  in  which 
lighter  shades  prevail.  5.  The  girls  are  more  brachycephalic 
than  the  boys,  and  the  range  of  divergence  of  the  cephalic 
measurements  is  small,  woman  seeming  to  conserve  better  and 
longer  the  racial  traits.  6.  The  greatest  differences  (cephalic) 
between  girls  and  boys — differences  seemingly  greater  than 
those  noted  in  other  races — occur  in  the  eleventh,  twelfth  and 
thirteenth  years.  7.  The  maximum  dimensions  of  the  cephalic 
diameters  are  reached  much  sooner  in  girls  than  in  boys,  so 
also  with  the  horizontal  circumference  —  the  other  cephalic 
elements  reach  their  development  in  girls  in  the  1 3-1 4th  year, 
in  boys  at  the  i6th.  8.  The  frontal  index  of  girls  is  higher 
than  that  of  boys  up  to  the  sixteenth  year,  beyond  that  lower, 
the  forehead  of  woman  being  much  narrower  than  that  of  man. 

9.  The  face  of  girls  is  narrower  and  longer  than  that  of  boys. 

10.  At  all  ages  the  facial  angle  of  girls  is  higher  than  that  of 
boys — women  (as  Ecker  noted)  having  more  convex  and  pro- 
minent (at  top)  foreheads,  an  aesthetic,  and  also  an  infantile 
characteristic.  11.  While  in  boys  a  high  facial  angle  seems  to 
be  correlated  with  lively  intelligence,  no  such  relation  seems  to 
exist  in  the  case  of  girls. 

B.  Physiological  and  Psychological. — i.  The  proportion  of 
myopia  is  less  among  girls  than  among  boys.  2.  The  chromatic 
sense  (Preyer's  method)  is  weaker  (erroneous  answers  16.1  per 
cent,  to  7.6  per  cent.)  in  girls  than  in  boys,  and  with  the  former 
the  colour-names  are  later  in  their  correlation  with  the  corre- 
sponding perceptions.  3.  The  memory  of  visual  images  is  much 
weaker  in  girls  than  in  boys.  4.  Girls  are  more  sensitive  to 
pain,  more  irritable,  less  tolerant  of  external  excitations  than 
boys ;  the  author  concludes  (with  Ottolenghi)  that,  so  far  as 
their  resistance  to  physical  pain  is  concerned,  women  seetn 
more  sensitive,  not  because  they  resist  pain  less,  but  because 
they  are  less  tolerant  (with  which  Sergi  also  agrees).  5.  Girls 
react  by  instinct  more  quickly  than  boys  to  all  external  excita- 
tions of  a  harmful  nature,  but  react  only  to  the  present  sensa- 
tion from  the  moment  that  they  perceive  it,  and  are  dominated 
by  it.  6.  The  cephalic  development  of  girls  is  much  more 
precocious  than  that  of  boys,  and  is  almost  complete  at  the 
epoch  of  sexual  development.  7.  Up  to  the  age  of  13-14 
years  girls  are  better  students  than  boys,  then  they  stop  sud- 
denly and  remain  thereafter  inferior  to  them — sexual  maturity 
bringing  about,  as  it  were,  a  sort  of  mental  regression  or  arrest 


THE   CHILD   AND   WOMAN  425 

of  development.  8.  Girls  present  a  less  proportion  of  cephalic 
anomalies  than  boys,  anomalies  of  the  forehead  being  the  most 
numerous.  9.  Physical  and  psychical  infantilism  are  more 
marked  in  girls  than  in  boys.  10.  In  girls  the  relation  is  less 
clear  than  in  boys  between  moral  and  degenerative  character- 
istics ;  women,  however,  possess  defective  and  intellectual 
weakness ;  with  them  the  effort  is  always  more  than  the  act, 
and  psychical  operations  are  more  fatiguing.  11.  In  degenerate 
girls,  as  in  boys,  the  qualities  peculiar  to  the  people  of  the 
Romagna— impetuosity,  impulsiveness,  etc. — appear  in  exag- 
gerated form.  12.  For  both  boys  and  girls  in  the  pre-pubertal 
epoch  the  harmful  and  fatiguing  exercises  of  the  gymnasium 
are  to  be  avoided,  and  certain  games  (recommended  by  Mosso), 
walks  in  the  country,  and  kindred  forms  of  recreation  to  be 
preferred,  while  in  the  education  of  girls  special  attention 
should  be  paid  to  the  development  of  the  aesthetic  emotions 
and  feelings,  and  nervous  work  of  all  kinds  leading  to  psychic 
and  moral  perversion,  and  undue  stimulation  or  excitation  of  the 
sexual  organs  eschewed  as  far  as  possible.  13.  In  the  post- 
pubertal  period  the  inferior  physical  development  of  woman 
seems  to  be  accompanied  by  an  inferior  intellectual  strength, 
due  largely  to  the  lack  of  muscular  exercise — a  deficiency  for 
the  bettering  of  which  Professor  Vitali  warmly  commends 
gymnastics.  14.  Intelligent  girls,  who  are  better  students, 
possess  a  sounder  organic  constitution,  and  are  more  robust. 
15.  The  great  need  of  girls  at  this  period  is  'increase  in  intel- 
lectual adaptability  to  the  assimilation  of  external  phenomena,' 
and  this  increase  in  the  assimilating  power  of  the  intellect  may 
come  through  well-considered  physical  exercises.  16.  In  girls 
up  to  the  age  of  14-15  years  the  tendencies  to  sobriety  and 
parsimony  are  weak ;  then  with  the  sexual  development  they 
become  enervated,  and  the  apathetic  tendencies  predominate. 
17.  In  the  girls  of  the  Romagna,  although  the  tendencies 
connected  with  the  instinct  of  preservation  are  not  so  very 
persistent,  those  which  are  of  a  defensive  or  offensive  nature 
(e.g.,  fear  and  anger,  which  take  on  a  pathological  form)  are, 
as  in  the  case  of  boys,  very  persistent ;  also  envy  and  egotism — 
intellectualised  forms  of  male  tendencies  favoured  by  the  pre- 
cocious development  of  the  intellectual  faculties  of  woman,  her 
inferior  organic  development,  her  more  sedentary  life,  domestic 
education,  etc.  18.  In  both  boys  and  girls  of  the  Romagna 
the  intellectual  tendencies/ar  excellence  are  but  little  developed ; 


426  THE   CHILD 

aesthetic  excitation,  romantic  ideality,  altruistic  feelings, 
strength  of  imagination  (and  the  emotional,  moral,  religious 
phenomena  dependent  thereon),  abstract  tendencies,  religious 
feeling,  mysticism,  are  all  more  or  less  weak — defects  which 
the  author  attributes  to  '  the  stability  of  the  psychic  characters 
of  this  people,  with  whom  the  organising  action  of  a  few  heads 
has  always  great  success.'  19.  As  compared  with  those  of 
men,  the  few  active  elements  constituting  personality  seem,  in 
woman,  weak ;  passionate,  impressionable  characters  are  not 
common,  and  the  dominating  tendencies  undergo  rapid  alter- 
nations of  effort  and  inhibition,  while  they  do  not  seem  to  be 
so  clearly  determined  and  determining  as  with  men.  20.  The 
female  character  is  more  temperate  than  the  male  ;  woman  has 
a  stronger  instinct  of  preservation  than  man,  and  in  all  psycho- 
physical phenomena  her  manifestations  are  more  passive, 
whence  she  is  a  better  practical  judge.  21.  The  persistency 
of  tendencies  in  woman,  though  less  than  that  of  man,  is, 
nevertheless,  great.  22.  Girls  are  more  suggestible  (Binet's 
method)  than  boys  ;  woman's  readiness  to  yield  to  suggestion. 
Professor  Vitali  thinks,  indicates  not  only  little  certainty  of 
judgment  (a  mark  of  weak  character),  but  largely  intellectual 
indolence ;  girls,  e.g.,  do  not  modify  their  first  judgment  in 
consequence  of  a  new  analysis,  or  at  the  intimation  of  the 
suggester,  but  make  a  new  answer,  opposite  or  contrary  to  the 
first,  as  if  two  opposite  ideas,  having  a  common  measure,  made 
a  saving  of  intellectual  labour.  23.  The  psychic  system  of  the 
woman  of  the  Romagna  is  less  coherent  than  that  of  the  man, 
and  the  exaggerated  admiration  of  self-qualities  (leading  to 
more  coherence  in  moral  qualities,  etc.)  is  not  so  intense  ; 
the  woman  of  the  Romagna  rules  in  the  family  (but  much  less 
in  society)  because  the  man  wills  it.  24.  Girls  possess  more 
than  boys  the  faculty  of  adapting  themselves  and  moulding 
themselves  to  the  environment,  and  a  larger  measure  of  common 
sense,  which,  could  woman  develop  less  suggestibility,  more 
self-judgment,  more  ability  to  examine  and  decide  after  analysis 
and  investigation,  more  confidence  in  her  own  personality  and 
less  reliance  upon  the  sayings  and  doings  of  others,  would 
enable  her  to  exercise  greater  influence  in  civic  life  and  social 
actions.  25.  The  civil  and  social  inferiority  of  woman  springs 
in  great  part  from  her  lack  of  confidence  in  herself  and  from 
her  passive  submission  ;  her  rise  lies  in  the  development  of  her 
own  responsibility  for  her  own  acts,  and  the  strengthening  of 


THE   CHILD   AND   WOMAN  42/ 

her  will  and  power  to  impose  respect.  26.  The  greater  success 
of  girls  attending  boys'  schools  is  due  to  the  increased  severity 
of  the  milieu  and  the  absence  of  that  affectation  of  caress  and 
protection  so  noticeable  in  girls'  schools.  27.  Co-education 
has  many  very  marked  advantages ;  girls  in  the  community  of 
life  with  boys  tend  to  become  free  and  sincere,  less  given  to 
simulation,  more  able  to  analyse  their  own  acts,  to  foresee  the 
consequences  of  them,  and  to  defend  themselves  against  their 
own  weaknesses.  28.  In  both  girls  and  boys  of  the  Romagna, 
emotional  character  not  being  highly  developed,  suggestive 
education  (of  the  sort  described  by  Thomas)  is  strongly 
recommended. 

C.  Educational. — i.  Generally  high  intelligence  and  good 
school  ability  are  parallel  in  the  brightest  girls,  but  in  the 
pubertal  epoch  the  percentage  of  scholarship  is  less  than  that 
of  lively  intelligence — a  fact  which  Professor  A^itali  attributes 
to  the  less  resistance  to  work  manifested  by  the  psychic  organ- 
ism at  this  period.  2.  The  girls  of  the  Romagna  possess 
predominantly  mediocre  intelligence,  but  as  related  to  scholar- 
ship it  is  superior  to  that  of  the  boys,  at  least  until  the  age  at 
which  they  attend  the  low^er  secondary  schools.  3.  At  all  ages 
(method  of  Lindley)  girls  have  a  greater  intellectual  tension, 
and  power  to  make  a  greater  single  effort.  4.  The  weak  power 
of  association  of  ideas  (the  memory  of  single  facts  is  easy)  in 
girls  is  related  to  weakness  of  will  and  abstraction  ;  in  women, 
the  mere  curiosity  of  single  facts  can  constitute  the  association 
with  others  and  retain  the  memory  of  them.  5.  For  organic 
or  atavistic  reasons,  mental  operations  do  not  excite  in  girls 
energetic  affective  states — ideas,  logical  reasonings,  the  opera- 
tions that  determine  knowledge,  leave  no  lasting  memory ;  it 
is  difficult  in  girls,  especially  at  puberty,  to  produce  and  to 
maintain  that  condition  of  intense  attention  necessary  for  pro- 
moting the  association  of  ideas.  6.  The  attention  of  women 
seems  not  to  be  motor,  but  static  or  theoretical ;  from  the  pose 
and  other  external  manifestations  it  would  seem  as  if  women 
were  more  attentive  than  men,  but  experiments  prove  that  this 
state  is  often  weakness,  intellectual  inertia ;  in  women  is  noted 
not  that  state  of  unconsciousness  resulting  from  distraction, 
but  a  state  of  immobility,  in  which  they  (by  reason  of  their 
organic  constitution)  remain  more  easily,  and  with  which 
agrees  the  condition  of  intellectual  inertia.  7.  Girls  (since 
attention  demands  a  great  expenditure  of  physical  energy)  are 


428  THE   CHILD 

unable  to  keep  the  intellect  long  in  tension ;  attention  does 
not  persist  long,  except  by  simulation,  and  remains  in  a  sort 
of  passive  condition.  8.  The  spirit  of  observation  (as  seen 
from  the  study  and  teaching  of  natural  history)  is  not  less 
developed  in  girls  than  in  boys,  but  may  seem  so,  because  in 
both  sexes  the  observation  does  not  attain  with  equal  success 
the  end  of  causing  the  mind  to  reflect  upon  the  things  observed, 
it  being  difficult  to  arouse  in  girls  a  reflective  attitude  of  the 
mind  towards  sense-perception.  9.  The  imaginative  and  asso- 
ciative faculty  in  girls  is  weaker  (as  determined  by  experiments 
as  to  mind-content  when  a  given  word  is  pronounced)  than  in 
boys.  10.  The  girls  of  the  Romagna  can,  by  study,  rise  to  the 
comprehension  of  things,  to  the  reason  that  analyses  and  com- 
prehends, but  not  to  the  reason  that  sympathises  and  creates. 
II.  The  school-girls  of  the  Romagna,  averse  to  minute  analytic 
work,  soon  become  fatigued  when  they  rise  to  the  higher 
mental  operations,  their  development  of  mind  not  permitting 
them  the  intellectual  emotion  which  urges  to  work  and  deter- 
mines the  direction  of  psychic  energy.  12.  The  greater 
number  of  rejections  occur  in  the  preparatory  classes  of  the 
normal  schools,  in  literature  particularly,  the  number  being 
much  less  in  the  sciences,  which,  together  with  the  greater 
progress  in  the  technical  schools  (attended  by  many  girls), 
Professor  Vitali  attributes  to  a  greater  liking  for  the  sciences 
and  to  the  influence  of  co-education.  13.  In  the  gymnasia 
the  greater  number  of  rejections  take  place  in  the  Quarta  and 
Quinta,  and  in  Greek  and  arithmetic.  14.  The  best  results 
among  the  graduates  (girls)  of  the  lyceums  have  been  achieved 
by  those  devoting  themselves  to  medicine  and  the  sciences. 
15.  Of  the  girls  graduating  from  the  lyceums,  all  were  of  good 
moral  conduct,  while  of  those  coming  from  the  public  schools, 
5.35  per  cent,  seem  not  to  have  acquired  in  their  school 
course  the  sentiment  of  moral  duty.  16.  The  statistics  of  the 
normal  schools  seem  to  show  that  the  majority  of  girls 
attend  them,  not  to  devote  themselves  to  the  profession  of 
teaching,  but  to  learn ;  and  Professor  Vitali,  holding  the 
family  and  maternity  to  be  the  highest  ideals  of  life  for 
woman,  would  assign  to  the  normal  schools  the  task  of  pre- 
paring good  women  and  good  mothers.  17.  The  education 
of  girls  hitherto  is  largely  responsible  for  the  weaker  will 
of  woman  ;  education  for  them  has  been  negative  instead  of 
positive ;  the  word  to  them  has  been  '  abstain,  be  contented, 


THE   CHILD   AND   WOMAN  429 

bear,'  instead  of  'will,  work.'  18.  The  'rests'  made  neces- 
sary by  woman's  organic  constitution  may  be  utilised  for 
the  cultivation  of  the  less-developed  faculties,  e.g.,  imagina- 
tion, abstraction,  etc. 

In  connection  with  Dr  Vitali's  thorough-going  investiga- 
tions, one  may  read  Miss  E.  H.  Bentley's  summary  of 
'  Sex-Differences  that  have  been  brought  out  by  Child- 
Study.' 

The  C/n/d-Type  and  Race-Types. — That  the  child,  the  woman, 
the  best  types  of  men  of  genius,  and  the  best  types  of  men  in 
modern  civilised  societies  (cities  especially),  where  the  arts  of 
peace  outweigh  the  arts  of  war  and  where  industrialism  has 
sustained  the  ameUoration  of  toil  due  to  modern  inventions, 
are  the  best  representatives  of  the  race-type,  the  promise,  in 
one  way  or  another,  of  the  man  to  be,  is  a  view  held  by 
many  authorities,  though  not  by  all.  Morselli,  the  Italian 
anthropologist,  thinks  it  equally  unjust  to  speak  of  the  inferi- 
ority and  childlikeness  of  woman  and  the  senility  of  man,  both 
types  being  equipotent  and  equivalent  in  their  fulfilment  of 
their  biological,  psychological  and  social  functions;  and  Mante- 
gazza  rather  inclines  to  see  two  parallel  existences  that  do  not 
touch  each  other,  each  having  a  different  task  to  fulfil,  although 
in  his  study  of  physiognomy  he  notes  the  fact  that  the  expres- 
sions of  woman  are  often  characteristically  childlike,  as  are 
those  of  men  of  genius.  Lombroso,  who  notes  the  childlike- 
ness of  woman  and  of  the  man  of  genius,  uses  it,  in  common 
with  many  other  writers  of  his  school,  as  an  argument  in  favour 
of  the  degeneracy  of  both.  Topinard  places  woman,  anthro- 
pologically, somewhere  between  man  and  the  child.  Dr  Franz 
Boas  ^  considers  that  women  and  children  present  the  most 
generalised  forms  of  race-types,  and  argues  that  the  children  of 
all  races  present  striking  similarities  as  compared  with  the 
notable  dissimilarities  of  their  parents,  although  women  re- 
semble one  another  from  race  to  race  more  than  do  men 
(60,  p.  16).  The  female  sex,  he  holds,  'is  in  all  the  pro- 
portions and  forms  of  its  body  more  like  the  child  than  the 
male,  and  the  most  specialised  types  appear  among  the  male 
sex.'  But  who,  he  asks,  would  think  of  explaining  '  this  earlier 
arrest  of  development  as  mark  of  a  lower  type.'  The  fact  of  early 
arrest  itself  is  not  necessarily  an  indication  of  lower  type  or  of 
degeneracy.  As  Dr  Boas  observes  (60,  p.  14) :  '  V/hile  in  man 
1  Science,  N.S.,  Vol.  VI.  p.  SS3. 


430  THE   CHILD 

the  face  develops  moderately  only,  it  grows  considerably 
among  the  apes.  The  earlier  arrest  in  this  case  is,  there- 
fore, an  indication  of  higher  type.  Thus  it  will  be  seen 
that  it  is  not  the  earlier  arrest  alone  which  determines 
the  place  of  a  race,  but  the  direction  of  this  development.' 
The  '  degeneracy '  of  the  human  face  is  thus  a  step  forward, 
not  backward.  So,  too,  with  certain  of  the  characteristics  of 
woman. 

That  the  child  is  'the  father  of  the  man,'  a  sort  of  ideal 
somatic  father,  has  been  maintained  by  more  than  one  writer. 
The  theory  of  Dr  Ranke  on  this  point  has  been  thus  sum- 
marised:  'There  is  an  ideal  infant  type  possessing  proportions 
that  are  common  to  the  majority  of  the  children  of  all  races, 
such  as  large  head,  long  body  and  short  limbs.  During 
subsequent  growth,  some  of  these  features  may  be  retarded,  or 
advanced,  thereby  resulting  in  the  changes  which  distinguish 
the  races.  The  Mongolian  stands  nearest  to  the  ideal  type, 
with  the  Malayan  next,  while  the  African  is  farthest  away,  and 
the  European  occupies  a  middle  position.  The  progress  of 
the  Mongolian  is  towards  a  smaller  head,  shorter  body  and 
longer  limbs.  The  almond-shaped  eyes  are  due  only  to  arrested 
growth,  as  are  the  constant  proportions  which  are  visible  in 
the  African  race.'  ^ 

Ranke's  view,  to  some  extent  at  least,  is  shared  apparently 
by  Dr  Boas,  who,  in  his  excellent  essay  on  *  Human  Faculty 
as  Determined  by  Race'  (60,  p.  17),  remarks:  'We  find  that 
the  characteristic  differences  between  man  and  ape  are  often 
more  pronounced  in  the  negro  than  in  the  white  race,  and  we 
may  say,  with  Ranke,  that  many  proportions  of  the  lower  races 
are  to  a  higher  degree  human  than  those  of  the  white,'  qualify- 
ing, however,  his  statement  by  saying  in  reservation  that  '  the 
proportions  of  the  body  do  not  depend  entirely  upon  descent, 
but  just  as  much  upon  mode  of  life.'  Havelock  Ellis  also 
supports  in  general  terms  the  contention  of  Ranke,  observing 
(183,  p.  24):— 

'  In  certain  characters,  however,  the  adult  European  is 
distinctly  at  the  furthest  remove  as  well  from  the  simian  and 
the  savage  as  from  the  infantile  condition ;  this  is  especially  so 
as  regards  the  nose,  which  only  reaches  its  full  development  in 
the  adult  white.  In  some  other  respects,  as  in  the  amount 
of  hair  on  the  body,  the  adult  European  recedes  both  from 
^  Amcr.  Anthr.,  Vol.  H.  p.  316. 


THE   CHILD   AND   WOMAN  43 1 

the  specifically  human  and  from  the  infantile  condition,  and 
remotely  approaches  the  ape.' 

According  to  Ranke,  the  Mongolian  race  (with  which  he 
affiliates  the  American  Indians  and  the  Malay  peoples) 
presents  the  most  striking  general  analogies  with  the  child- 
type,  while  the  Australians  and  the  negroes,  in  the  pro- 
portions of  their  body,  are  the  most  remote  from  it  — 
the  European  races  taking  a  mid-position  between  these 
tivo  extremes.  The  relatively  larger  head,  longer  trunk, 
shorter  arms  and  legs  bring  the  Mongolian  nearer  to 
the  child.  The  peculiarities  of  the  negro  in  respect  of 
body-proportions,  when  compared  with  the  child  and  with 
other  races,  are  not  theromorphic  analogies,  bringing  him 
nearer  to  the  ape,  but  rather  exaggerations  of  the  typically 
human  forms — relatively  smaller  head,  longer  trunk,  arms,  and 
especially  legs — carrying  him  farther  along  the  line  of  upward 
development  as  seen  in  the  progress  of  the  individual  from 
childhood  to  adult  age.  Ranke  goes  so  far  as  to  speak  in  the 
same  terms  of  the  black  colour  (not  present  at  birth,  and 
having  some  analogies  with  brownish  colour  in  Europeans), 
the  prominent  lips  (certainly  not  ape-like),  the  marked  lumbar 
curve — these  are  all  exaggerations  of  something  noticeably 
human,  not  peculiarities  that  link  the  black  races  closely 
with  the  ape.  In  some  respects,  on  the  other  hand, 
certain  cranial  peculiarities,  which  Virchow  has  noted, 
cause  some  of  the  black  races  to  approach  the  child  or 
the  female  type.  Some  peculiarities  of  the  European  races 
— the  development  of  the  face,  the  eyes,  and  especially  the 
nose — carry  them  as  far  along  the  really  human  road  of 
development  as  do  the  body-characteristics  just  mentioned 
in  the  negro  (520,  p.   115). 

Judged  by  their  larger  head  alone,  the  European  races 
stand  upon  a  level  nearer  the  child  than  the  negro,  but  the 
former's  possession  of  a  greater  brain,  together  with  their  role 
in  human  history,  seem  to  forbid  the  view  that  a  develop- 
mentally  low  cranial  form  must  always  be  associated  with 
inferior  abilities  in  general.  Each  race  seems  to  possess  some- 
thing, or  several  things,  typically  human  (often  in  excess);  none 
possesses  every  one  of  them. 

In  his  paper  on  '  Racial  Anatomical  Peculiarities,'  Dr  D.  K. 
Shute  notes  the  following  changes  or  processes  of  evolution 
as  now  going  on  in  the  human  body : — 


432 


THE   CHILD 


Character. 

Nature  of  Change. 

Face 

Facial  suture   . 
Cranium  . 
Cranial  sutures 
Canine  teeth    . 
3rd  molar 
8th,  9th,  loth  ribs 
1 2th  rib  . 
Spinal  curvatures 
Pelvis  (female) 
Big  toe  (bones) 
Little  toe  (bones) 

decreasing  in  size 
closing  earlier 
increasing  in  size 
closing  later 
reduced  in  size 
tending  to  disappear 
reduced  in  size 
tending  to  disappear 

, ,          increase 
increasing  in  size  (in  correlation  with  cranium) 
tending  (through  use)  to  increase  in  size 
tending  (through  disuse)  to  decrease  in  size  and 
number  of  phalanges  by  ankylosis 

As  'anatomical  peculiarities,  which,  taken  together,  stamp  a 
race  as  high  or  low,'  Dr  Shute  mentions  the  following,  which 
are  more  or  less  simioid  : — 


Humerus    unduly   long    and  per- 
forated 
Calcaneum  (heel-bone)  elongated 
Calf  of  leg  small 
Tibia  flattened 
Pelvis  narrow 


Cranial  sutures  simple  and  uniting 
early 

Nasal  aperture  wide,  with  nasal  bones 
ankylosed 

Jaws  unduly  projecting  and  chin  re- 
ceding 

Wisdom  teeth,  well-developed,  ap- 
pearing early  and  permanent 

According  to  Dr  Shute,  '  measured  by  these  criteria,  the  Cau- 
casian stands  at  the  head  of  the  racial  scale  and  the  negro 
at  the  bottom'  (593,  p.  127). 

In  the  discussion  on  this  paper,  Dr  Frank  Baker,  taking 
into  consideration  the  modifications  from  primitive  environ- 
ment which  the  anthropoids,  the  whites  and  the  negroes  have 
severally  sustained,  'each  having  proceeded  in  development 
according  to  the  condition  of  existence,'  doubts  the  existence 
of  the  '  ape-like  characters '  of  the  negro. 

'After  examination  of  many  bodies  of  Africans  found  in 
the  dissecting-rooms,'  says  Dr  Baker  (593,  p.  128),  'it  seems 
evident  that  ape-like  characters  are  no  more  common  among 
them  than  among  whites.'  Agam,  in  his  address  on  'The 
Ascent  of  Man,'  we  read :  '  Between  the  lowest  and  most 
brutalised  labourers  and  the  cultivated  and  intelligent  classes 
there  exist  anatomical  differences  as  great  as  those  which 
separate  the  white  and  the  negro'  (21,  p.  319). 


THE   CHILD   AND   WOMAN  433 

No  human  race,  according  to  Sir  William  Turner,  is  so 
constituted,  so  far  as  the  skeleton  is  concerned,  as  to  place  it 
in  every  respect  above  all  others,  nor  does  there  exist  any  one 
race  whose  skeletal  characters  are  such  as  to  place  it,  in  all  its 
peculiarities,  below  all  other  human  races.  While,  e.g.,  the 
character  of  the  skull  and  the  pelvis  in  the  European  races 
remove  them  farther  from  the  mammifers  than  the  Australians, 
Bushmen,  Negroes,  etc.,  the  proportionate  relations  of  the 
lower  limbs  with  the  upper,  of  the  humerus  and  the  femur, 
bring  the  European  nearer  to  the  apes  than  are  the  black  races 
generally.  The  Lapps  and  Eskimo,  who,  with  respect  to  the 
proportions  between  the  lower  and  upper  limbs  and  between 
the  humerus  and  the  femur,  are  nearest  to  the  apes  of  all  the 
races  of  men,  are  nevertheless  the  farthest  removed  from  them 
in  the  proportionate  relations  of  the  forearm  and  the  arm,  of 
the  leg  and  the  thigh.  In  respect  to  the  proportion  between 
the  forearm  and  the  arm  the  Fuegians  seem  to  be  the  most 
pithecoid  or  monkey-like  of  men,  but  are  very  far  removed 
from  the  apes  by  their  pelvis,  which  is  of  a  very  high  type. 

The  physical  differences  between  white  and  negro  children 
in  the  United  States  have  been  very  recently  investigated  by 
Dr  Ales  Hrdlicka  of  New  York,  who  has  carefully  noted  the 
racial  and  sexual  characteristics  of  some  iioo  white  and  300 
coloured  children  from  the  age  of  five  up  to  or  a  little  beyond 
puberty.  Among  the  principal  i)oints  brought  out  are  the 
following  : — i.  White  children  generally  present  more  diversity, 
negro  children  more  uniformity,  in  all  their  normal  physical 
characters — a  peculiarity  which  becomes  more  marked  as  age 
increases.  2.  Physical  abnormalities  of  congenital  origin  are 
much  less  frequent  in  the  negro  child,  but  acquired  abnor- 
malities (principally  the  result  of  rachitic  conditions)  are  less 
frequent  in  the  white  child.  In  other  words,  the  white  child 
suffers  more  from  being  born,  the  negro  child  more  from 
living  in  a  certain  environment. 

Dr  Hrdlicka  (308,  p.  62)  notes  also  the  interesting  fact 
that  'the  coloured  girl,  before  the  age  of  puberty,  and  some- 
times even  beyond  this  period,  is  a  great  deal  more  the  shape 
of  a  boy  than  is  the  case  with  the  white  girl.'  Such  decidedly 
feminine  characters  as  the  shape  of  the  shoulders  and  thorax, 
narrowed  waist,  large  hips,  fat  thighs,  which  appear  in  white 
girls  as  early  as  eight  years,  do  not  become  manifest  in  negro 
girls  '  until  after  twelve  years  of  age,  or  much  later.' 


ALASKAN   ESKIMO  GIRT.. 

(From  Rep.  U.S.  Contm.  of  Educ,  1894.)     Illustrates  the  views  01  Fritsch  as  to 
primitive  childhood  under  the  influence  of  civilisation. 


THE   CHILD   AND   WOMAN  435 

Civilisation  and  Food, — Dr  Fritsch,  a  quarter  of  a  century 
ago,  emphasised  the  influence  of  civiHsation  upon  the  bodily 
characteristics  of  man,  resulting  sometimes  'in  but  a  single 
generation  in  important  modifications  of  the  more  external 
racial  characteristics' — diflerences  which,  Dr  Franz  Boas 
observes,  '  are  quite  in  accord  with  the  differences  between 
wild  animals  and  domesticated  animals ;  and  we  all  know 
how  far-reaching  the  influence  of  domestication  may  become ' 
(60,  p.  20). 

Civilisation  means  more  or  less  regular  work,  with  a 
sufificiency  of  reasonable  food,  and  with  these  goes  a  rapid 
impiovement  in  the  musculature  and  general  fulness  of  body, 
besides  such  development  in  particular  of  special  limbs  or 
organs  as  certain  forms  of  labour  and  exercise  inevitably  entail. 
Dr  Fritsch  points  out  that  the  shoulder  and  pelvic  girdle  do 
not,  among  wild  tribes  (even  with  respect  to  individuals),  as 
compared  with  racial  type,  reach  the  same  degree  of  perfection 
found  among  those  under  the  influence  of  civilisation.  Hart- 
mann,  who'has  studied  the  North  African  tribes,  confirms 
this  statement,  which  was  made  by  Fritsch,  concerning  the 
South  African  aborigines.  The  latter  even  goes  so  far  as  to 
say  :  '  Members  of  aboriginal  tribes  in  the  neighbourhood,  and 
under  the  influence  of  civilisation,  attain  the  best  possible 
development  of  body,  particularly  with  respect  to  general 
rounding  of  form,  development  of  musculature  and  skeleton, 
and,  above  all,  in  facial  traits '  (223,  p.  125). 

The  portrait  of  a  Fingoe  girl,  grown  up  as  a  child-nurse 
among  the  whites,  shows,  when  compared  with  her  wild 
fellows,  as  Fritsch  remarks,  'a  softer,  more  rounded  form  of 
face,  absence  of  the  dull,  wald  expression,  and  an  unmistak- 
able impress  of  intelligence' — changes  which,  to  a  less  extent, 
the  portrait  of  a  Fingoe  man  also  exhibits.  This  greater  intel- 
ligence of  expression  in  the  face  has  been  noted  by  other 
observers,  _   ■ 

Girls  especially  (when  the  evils  of  white  civilisation  are 
kept  from  them)  benefit  much  by  this  contact  and  elevation, 
for  with  their  own  people  life  is  hard,  and  they  develop  early, 
and  as  quickly  fade. 

Fritsch  rightly  warns  against  taking  natives  who  have 
passed  their  lives  in  direct  contact  with  civilisation,  who  have 
been  brought  up  from  childhood  in  the  houses  of  the  whites 
or  in  the  missions,  still  more  those  who  have  grown  up  not  in 

29 


436  THE  CHILD 

their  own  country  but  in  other  lands,  amid  similar  surround- 
ings and  influences  as  typical  aborigines.  Even  upon  the 
adult  savage  such  influences  have  their  eff"ect,  while  upon  the 
growing  child  they  work  unceasingly  to  round  off"  the  sharp 
corners  of  the  body  and  to  light  the  face  with  the  soul  of  a 
more  expressive  intelligence  (223,  p.  239). 

The  Fingoes  (Kaffirs)  who  carry  loads  through  the  surf  at 
Port  Elisabeth,  in  Cape  Colony,  and  who  have  grown  up  on 
the  spot,  have  a  development  of  the  forearm  and  the  calf  of 
the  legs  often  far  superior  to  that  attained  by  the  natives  who 
have  preserved  their  primitive  character,  and  with  whom  the 
upper  arm  and  the  thigh  are  the  parts  more  strongly  developed 
in  relation  to  the  remaining  musculature  (223,  p.  20). 

According  to  M.  Gauttard,^  since  the  occurrence  of  the 
revolution  of  1868,  when  the  Japanese  people  began  in 
earnest  their  rapid  acquisition  of  western  civilisation,  some 
surprising  changes  in  the  national  type  have  occurred,  while  in 
Cambodia  the  Europeans  are  said  to  be  in  process  of  acquiring 
the  type  and  aspect  of  the  natives.  It  has  been  often  asserted, 
although  the  evidence  is  not  at  all  convincing,  that  in  the 
present  population  of  New  England  there  is  in  process  a 
reversion  to  the  type  and  aspect  of  the  aboriginal  inhabitants. 

For  G.  Delaunay  (155,  p.  6^)  evolution  is  nothing  more 
nor  less  than  '  the  nutrition  of  anatomical  elements.'  The 
anatomical  and  physiological  differences  which  'distinguish 
races,  sexes,  ages,  constitutions,  sides  of  the  body,  etc.,'  and 
which  '  assure  the  pre-eminence  of  the  higher  races  over  the 
lower,  of  the  male  sex  over  the  female,  of  adults  over  children 
and  old  people,  of  the  strong  over  the  weak,  of  the  right  side 
over  the  left,'  are,  at  birth,  '  ml  or  almost  n//,'  but  increase 
from  year  to  year  until  the  age  of  about  45  is  attained,  then 
diminish  more  and  more  after  50,  becoming  again  almost  ?n7 
or  ni7  in  old  age.  The  race  is  thus  composed  of  opposite 
biological  groups,  viz. : — (i)  The  better  nourished,  more 
vigorous,  more  intelligent,  made  up  of  the  strong  (strong 
races,  strong  sex,  strong  ages,  strong  constitution,  strong 
side)  :  (2)  the  weaker  (weak  races,  weak  sex,  weak  ages, 
weak  constitution,  weak  side).  These  two  groups  are  united 
by  individuals  occupying  intermediary  stages  or  keeping  the 
golden  mean  between  the  higher  and  lower  groups — medium 
races,  medium  ages  (adolescence,  ripe  age),  people  of  medium 
*  /iVz'.  Scientif.,  1897,  p.  569. 


THE   CHILD   AND   WOMAN  437 

constitutions.     Naturally  these  anatomico-physiological  differ- 
ences carry  with  them  certain  pathological  extremes. 

Food  conditions,  no  doubt,  account  in  part  for  the  con- 
flicting statements  of  travellers  concerning  the  physical  condi- 
tion and  appearance  of  savage  peoples.  Thus,  as  a  result  of 
the  French  scientific  mission  to  Cape  Horn,  we  learn  :  '  The 
Fuegians  are  not  the  ugly,  ill-propnrlioned  beings  that  travellers 
have  represented  ihcm  to  be.  Like  most  short  races,  they  are 
rather  thick-set,  and  the  head  appears  disproportionately  large. 
The  question  of  nutrition  has  great  importance  in  relation  to 
their  external  form,  and  natives  who,  in  a  state  of  semi-starva- 
tion, had  a  lean,  repulsive  look,  acquired  surprising  grace,  and 
even  beauty  of  outline,  after  a  period  of  good  feeding.  This 
was  especially  noted  in  the  Fuegians,  who  were  taken  to  Paris.'  ^ 
The  difference  between  a  '  lean '  year  and  a  '  fat '  ye^  with 
some  primitive  peoples  is  sufficient  to  change  their  physical 
appearance  most  remarkably.  Dr  Frank  Baker  observes, 
warningly :  '  Savages,  when  ill-fed  and  living  in  unfavourable 
conditions,  may  simulate  the  habits  of  anthropoids,  and  this 
has  an  effect  upon  their  physical  structure,  yet  not  on  that 
account  should  we  too  readily  accept  their  close  relationship ' 
(21,  p.  319). 

Dr  D.  G.  Brinton,  in  his  discussion  of  the  'Variations  in 
the  Human  Skeleton  and  their  Causes,' assigns  to  'deficient 
nutrition  '  a  very  extensive  and  important  role  in  the  production 
of  such  variations,  among  which  he  mentions  dwarfed  stature, 
true  microcephaly,  spina  bifida,  rickets,  ill-developed  sternum, 
bones  in  the  sutures  of  cranium  and  face,  epactal  bones,  wormian 
bones,  ossa  Incce,  exostoses,  etc.  He  holds,  with  Bateson  (against 
Darwin),  that  variation  is  greater  in  wild  than  in  domesticated 
animals,  and  with  Virchow  that  the  'anomalies  of  the  bony 
structure  in  man  are  constantly  and  markedly  greater  among 
uncivilised  than  among  civilised  peoples,  and  consequently 
greater  among  ancient  races  than  among  those  now  living,' 
believing  that  '  in  man  its  increase  in  the  savage  state  evidently 
depends  upon  fluctuations  in  the  food  supply,  and  frequent 
changes  and  excessive  stress  of  mechanical  function  as  the 
prime  factors'  (80,  p.  386).  Regularity  and  certainty  of  the 
food  supply  were,  as  Morgan  noted,  mighty  factors  in  lifting 
the  early  tribes  of  man  in  the  scale  of  culture ;  the  child,  whose 
infancy  made  civilisation  possible,  was  especially  favoured, 
^  Amer.  Anthrop.,  V.  p.  92. 


438  THE   CHILD 

and  benefited  among  the  primitive  Aryans  and  Semites  by  the 
domestication  of  animals  and  the  cultivation  of  plants,  through 
the  introduction  of  which  he  ceased  to  be  the  grudged  member 
at  the  primitive  table  (435a,  p.  25).  All  over  the  world  la 
viiscre  (lack,  above  all,  of  enough  good  things  to  eat),  has,  as 
Dr  Brinton  points  out,  made  itself  felt  as  a  prime  factor  in  the 
causation  of  human  variation.  This  is  so  in  France,  where, 
according  to  Collignon,  diminution  of  stature,  in  certain  dis- 
tricts, follows  closely  in  its  wake,  or  in  northern  Europe,  where, 
Virchow  tells  us,  the  dwarfish  Lapps  are  '■  Kilmfjiei-formen,  as 
compared  with  their  cousins,  the  Finns,'  or  in  the  Kalahari 
desert  in  South  Africa,  with  its  miserable  Bushmen,  of  whom 
the  shortest  are  also  the  most  wretchedly  nourished.  Primi- 
tive man  is  twin- sufferer  with  the  modern  child  from  this  ill- 
nutritlon.  To  be  able  to  eat  all  one  wants  is  by  no  means  the 
endowment  of  all  the  human  young  at  the  present  time,  very 
many  of  whom  are  decidedly  worse  off  under  the  regime  of 
civilisation  than  when  the  command,  '  feed  my  lambs,'  was  first 
given  out,  and  man  had  made  for  himself  a  '  land  flowing  with 
milk  and  honey.'  To  the  effect  of  good  food,  more  even  to 
that  of  fresh  air  and  change  of  environment,  are  to  be  attri- 
buted the  betterment  and  improvement  of  the  physical  condi- 
tion of  children  brought  about  by  the  '  outings,'  '  summer  trips,' 
'vacation  colonies,'  etc.,  which,  since  the  initiative  of  Pastor 
Bion  of  Ziirich  in  1876,  have  spread  over  all  the  countries  of 
Europe,  so  that  in  Denmark  '  winter  outings '  even  have  been 
recently  instituted.  The  general  tendency  of  these  'outings,' 
the  length  of  which  varies  from  a  few  days  or  weeks  to  several 
months,  is,  judging  from  the  accounts  and  descriptions  of 
Varrentrapp  and  Bion  and  the  more  or  less  scattered  but  con- 
stantly increasing  fugitive  literature  of  the  subject,  to  increase 
the  weight  of  the  boys  and  girls  more  and  more  frequently 
than  their  stature,  although  the  latter  is  very  often  notably 
affected.  Some  of  the  marked  increase  of  weight  in  certain 
'outings'  has  been  held  to  be  due  to  the  little  exercise 
indulged  in  by  the  children,  but  other  statistics  call  this  in 
question.  Another  thing  noticed  is  the  greater  effect  of  'out- 
ings '  in  the  country  and  mountains  as  compared  with  the  so- 
called  'town-colonies'  and  'milk-colonies,'  although  Cologne 
in  1886  showed  about  the  same  increase  in  weight  for  both 
town  and  country  'colonies.'  With  some  children  no  increase 
in  weight  or  in  stature  could  be  noted,  and  a  few  even  de- 


THE   CHILD   AND   WOMAN  439 

creased  in  weight,  while  others  were  made  sick  or  not  at  all 
improved  by  the  change.  It  was  also  remarked,  in  some  cases, 
that  after  the  return  from  the  'outing '  the  children  grew  more 
slowly,  or  even  decreased  a  little  in  weight,  which  decrease, 
however,  was  usually  soon  made  up  for.  It  is  quite  evident 
that  here,  as  in  so  many  other  cases,  no  panacea  for  all  has 
been  found,  and  that  *  outings '  do  not,  and  probably  never 
can,  produce  the  same  results  in  all  children  (57). 

Dr  Hrdlicka  (308,  p.  40),  from  a  comparison  of  the  meas- 
urements of  Worcester  (Mass.)  school-children  with  those  of 
children  of  the  New  York  Juvenile  Asylum  as  to  length  of 
trunk  and  of  lower  limbs,  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  'it  is 
possible  that  it  is  in  the  lower  extremities  where  lies  the  prin- 
cipal defect  in  the  growth  of  the  badly-nourished  children.' 
As  is  well  known,  the  lower  limbs  of  the  new-born  infant  are 
very  short,  and  for  some  time  the  limbs  grow  proportionately 
more  than  the  body,  '  the  greatest  length  of  the  lower  limbs 
seeming  to  be  attained  from  the  thirteenth  to  the  sixteenth 
year,'  and  after  the  fifteenth  or  sixteenth  year  and  onward  till 
the  cessation  of  growth,  'the  body  seems  to  increase  slightly 
in  proportion  to  the  lower  extremities,'  the  greater  proportional 
growth  of  the  latter  having  ceased. 

The  effect  of  food  and  civilisation  upon  the  growing  child 
of  all  races  of  men  is  evidently  very  marked,  but  it  is  going 
too  far  to  seek  to  explain  all  the  differences  of  importance 
between  the  races  as  originally  of  nutritional  origin,  for  the 
new  social  milieu  of  civilisation  and  the  social  advances  of  the 
race  century  after  century  must  account  for  not  a  few  of  these 
— the  decrease  in  the  size  of  the  jaws,  etc.,  for  example,  being 
as  much  due  to  social  evolution  as  to  nutritional,  and  the 
same  thing  may  be  said  of  other  departures  from  the  brute 
type  which  may  be  found  in  woman  and  the  child.  The 
European  child  represents,  in  fact,  a  genial  form  of  the  Mon- 
golian general  type,  whose  childlikeness  in  many  physical  and 
mental  characteristics  has  long  been  recognised.  For  this 
reason  the  study  of  the  development  of  Japanese  children 
who  are  now  being  brought  more  and  more  under  the  influ- 
ence of  European  and  American  food  and  culture,  is  of  the 
highest  interest,  as  is  also  that  of  primitive  peoples,  capable  of 
assimilating  in  their  own  way  more  or  less  of  our  civilisation, 
such  as  the  unspoiled  Malays  of  the  East  Indies.  If  the  Indo- 
European  child  is  physically  but  a  specialised  form  of  the 


440 


THE   CHILD 


Mongolian  type,  the  history  of  the  extreme  Orient  is  of  the 
greatest  importance  to  the  student  of  human  evokition. 

There  seems  to  be  increasing  justification  for  some  such 
view  as  that  just  indicated,  or  a  modified  form  of  it,  more  in 
harmony  with  the  doctrine  of  descent,  and  the  significant 
relationship  of  woman  and  the  child  is  assuming  more  and 
more  importance  in  interpretative  anthropology.  There  is  deep 
truth  in  the  words  of  Havelock  Ellis  :  '  When  we  have  realised 
the  position  of  the  child  in  relation  to  evolution  we  can  take  a 
clearer  view  as  to  the  natural  position  of  woman.  She  bears 
the  special  characteristics  of  humanity  in  a  higher  degree  than 
man  (as  Burdach  pointed  out),  and  led  evolution  in  the  matter 
of  hairiness  (as  Darwin,  following  Burdach,  pointed  out), 
simply  because  she  is  nearer  to  the  child.  Her  conservatism 
is  thus  compensated  and  justified  by  the  fact  that  she  repre- 
sents, more  nearly  than  man,  the  human  type  to  which  man  is 
approximating'  (183,  p.  392).  The  study  of  primitive  woman 
and  of  primitive  children  has  hardly  yet  begun,  but  what  little 
we  have  learned  bids  us  hope  for  much  more  light  upon  the 
problems  discussed  in  these  pages  from  such  unexhausted 
sources. 


CHAPTER    XI 

SUMMARY   AND   CONCLUSION 

This  study  of  the  child  began  with  the  consideration  of  the 
helplessness  of  the  human  infant  and  its  significance.  Between 
the  state  of  the  human  being  at  birth  and  his  adult  perfection 
there  exists  a  wider  gap  than  can  be  found  in  the  case  of  any  of 
the  lower  animals,  the  prolonged  intra-uterine  life  being  suc- 
ceeded by  a  period  in  which  the  child  is  able  to  survive 
only  through  the  sociahty  of  those  who  form  his  immediate 
environment.  The  reason  for  this  'prolongation  of  human 
infancy'  in  the  evolutionary  process  has  been  made  clear  by 
Fiske  ;  it  is  Nature's  device  to  ensure  the  sociality  of  the  race. 
The  helplessness  of  the  child  was  necessary  to  bring  about  the 
helpfulness  of  mankind.  The  great  social  virtues  that  now 
distinguish  man  were  born  of  the  need  for  taking  care  of  his 
offspring  unable  to  help  itself.  The  prolongation  of  the 
infantile  period  provided  an  epoch  of  plasticity  and  educability 
during  which  the  race-acquisitions  could  be  transferred  to 
the  individual,  and  the  forces  of  heredity,  in  so  far  as  that 
is  possible,  directed  and  moulded  after  the  wisest  fashion.  If 
Nature  had  brought  men  and  women  into  the  world  adults, 
already  grown  up,  the  intelligence  of  the  race  must  have 
been  vastly  less  than  it  is  now.  Rousseau  goes  too  far,  perhaps, 
when  he  declares  that,  under  such  conditions,  human  beings 
would  have  been  'perfect  imbeciles,'  but  it  is  evident  that 
through  being  a  child,  by  the  growth-process,  by  the  develop- 
ment of  his  own  faculties  from  weakness  to  strength,  from 
uselessness  to  expertness,  man  has  come  to  be  man.  The 
helplessness  of  infancy,  again,  is  Nature's  pledge  that  man's 
great  brain-power — for  he  has  advanced  in  intelligence  more 
than  in  any  other  way — shall  not  serve  for  his  undoing  or  work 
to  his  hurt  before  he  reaches  manhood  with  its  innumerable 

441 


442  THE   CHILD 

social  and  cosmic  restraints.  His  comparatively  witless  infancy 
foreshadows  the  intellectuality  of  his  later  years.  The  moment 
Nature  decided  that,  with  man,  the  struggle  for  existence 
was  ultimately  to  be  altruistic,  rather  than  selfish,  she  was 
forced  to  make  man  weak  in  order  to  ensure  his  later  strength 
in  the  right  direction. 

With  the  advance  of  civilisation  and  social  evolution  the 
'infancy'  of  man  has  been  prolonged  so  as  to  include  all 
the  years  of  adolescence  and  youth,  practically  all  the  immature 
periods  of  life — which  is  made  use  of  to  nurture  and  to  school 
the  individual — so  that  in  the  highest  civilised  communities  the 
thirtieth  year  often  represents  the  time  at  which  the  man 
has  finished  what  some  animals  accomplish  in  as  many  days  or 
even  hours,  to  say  nothing  of  those  whose  instincts  are  almost 
ready  for  use  at  birth. 

To  leave  the  child  absolutely  helpless  during  all  the  period 
of  infancy,  and  to  bring  him  into  manhood  by  a  sudden  waking 
up  which  should  shock  him  into  sense  and  into  wisdom,  is 
hardly  Nature's  way.  The  playfulness  of  young  animals  and  of 
the  young  human  being  have  been  commented  upon  by  almost 
all  philosphers,  ancient  and  modern.  For  a  long  time  the 
exuberance  of  play  seemed  of  itself  to  account  for  its  existence ; 
it  w^as  surplus  energy,  taking  on  here  and  there  an  aesthetic 
form  and  changing  ever  and  anon  to  art.  The  relation  of  play 
to  the  various  arts  and  activities  of  human  social  life  seems 
only  recently  to  have  received  its  true  interpretation.  When 
Professor  Groos  says,  epigrammatically,  that  'the  animal  {or 
the  child)  does  not  play  because  he  is  young,  but  has  a  period 
of  youth  because  he  must  play,'  he  comes  very  near  the  root  of 
the  whole  matter.  Partly,  at  least,  '  the  very  existence  of  youth 
is  due  to  the  necessity  for  play.'  Youth  was  furnished  to 
the  animal  in  the  natural  order  of  things  for  the  purpose 
of  enabling  him,  when  they  made  their  presence  felt,  to  use  and 
to  control  the  great  mass  of  innate  instincts  which  he  inherits  as 
a  member  of  a  race  or  species  with  a  long  and  varied  past.  In 
a  word,  animals,  and  man  more  especially,  possess  youth 
because  the  creation  of  art  and  civilisation  was  a  necessity 
— and  these  had  to  be  fashioned  from  instincts  through  the 
transforming  power  of  play.  A  safe  and  considerate  use  of  the 
great  intellectuality  of  the  human  adult  was  secured  by  making 
a  considerable  portion  of  his  early  life  physically  and  even 
mentally  helpless,  and   in   like  manner  the  morality  and   the 


SUMMARY   AND   CONCLUSION  443 

culture  of  the  adult  was  ensured  by  the  invention  of  a  playing 
childhood.  Civilisation  is  a  result  of  man's  having  been  young; 
play  has  laid  the  foundations  of  culture  by  organising  his 
instincts  and  busying  them  in  ways  that  tell  for  the  future 
of  man.  Play  extends  its  influence  over  everything  in  child- 
hood, and  for  the  child  everything  can  be  the  subject  of 
play. 

Exactly  where  play  leaves  off  and  work  begins  is  a  moot 
question,  for  there  is  always  work  in  play  and  play  in  work. 
There  is  something  in  the  view  that  play  and  work  represent  in 
general  the  chief  distinction  between  the  life  of  the  primitive 
man  and  that  of  the  civilised,  but  this  point  has  been  made  too 
much  of.  Here,  again,  the  genius  approaches  the  child,  for 
with  him  it  is  extremely  difficult  to  distinguish  work  from 
play ;  indeed,  the  highest  forms  of  work  known  to  man,  as 
exhibited  in  the  scientist,  the  poet,  the  orator,  the  artist,  lie 
very  close  to  the  play  of  the  child.  The  intimate  connection 
even  now  existing  between  the  plays  and  games  of  children  and 
the  various  forms  of  work  still  current  or  known  from  the  past 
have  furnished  suggestions  which  have  been  utilised  by 
educators  in  many  lands,  some  of  whom  have  endeavoured,  by 
the  establishment  of  play-grounds,  or  play-schools,  to  educate 
children  along  the  lines  of  their  natural  bent  and  disposition, 
seeing  in  play,  as  Froebel  did,  'the  germinal  leaves'  of  later 
life.  But  play,  the  child's  activity,  like  the  utter  helplessness' of 
early  infancy,  his  seeming  rest,  may  not  be  too  freely  tampered 
with.  A  minimum  of  wise,  directive  interference,  with  a 
maximum  of  wiser,  sympathetic  encouragement,  even  with 
participation,  at  times,  is  the  sanest  policy.  If  the  teacher  can 
ever  be  a  child  with  the  child,  he  or  she  can  do  so  judiciously 
here.  But  never  must  the  naivete  and  the  genius  of  child  play 
be  too  soon  changed  to  the  mere  copy  of  adult  word  and 
deed. 

The  study  of  the  resemblances  of  the  young  and  of  their 
genius  has  taught  us  how  Nature  seems  to  foreshadow  her 
triumphs,  and  how,  by  the  unity  of  the  young,  she  enables 
us  to  establish  the  less  apparent  and  less  intelligible  unity 
of  the  adult  and  the  aged.  From  the  resemblances  of  children 
all  over  the  globe  among  the  various  races  of  men  we  can  argue 
the  general  physical  unity  of  Ihe  human  species  as  well  as 
the  general  psychical  unity  of  mankind.  And  when  we  leave 
man,  it  is  the  young  ape,  and  not  the  adult  simian,  that  bears 


444  THE   CHILD 

the  greatest  likeness  to  him  ;  the  immense  difference  in  sociality, 
which  the  possession  of  the  erect  position  with  its  amplitude  of 
extra-organic  aids  to  development,  and  the  prolongation  of 
human  infancy,  have  made  possible,  accounting  for  a  vast 
amount  of  difference  between  the  aged  human  and  the  aged 
simian. 

The  comparison  of  the  young  human  being  with  the  young 
gorilla,  and  of  the  adults  of  these  species  with  each  other, 
exemplifies  in  the  best  manner  possible  the  role  of  intelligence 
and  sociality  in  the  evolution  of  human  kind.  With  the  gorilla, 
the  necessity  for  the  production  and  maintenance  of  'an 
effective  fighting  apparatus  '  subordinated  the  general  structural 
features  to  that  end,  and  we  have,  as  a  result,  huge  jaws,  large 
teeth,  and  a  ponderous  skull  well  marked  with  ridges  for  the 
insertion  of  strong  muscles.  In  man,  the  necessity  for  the 
building  and  continuance  of  a  capacious  brain-case  sub- 
ordinated all  structural  features  of  the  skull  to  that  end,  and  we 
have  smaller  jaws  and  teeth,  weaker  muscles  and  attachments, 
and  a  lighter,  smoother,  finer  skull.  With  the  gorilla  the  head 
had  to  win  its  way  by  brute  strength,  in  man  by  intelligence — 
and  with  intelligence  came,  longo  intervallo,  beauty. 

The  dim  prophecy  seen  in  the  skull  of  the  young  gorilla, 
who  seems  striving  hard  to  be  human,  is  realised  in  man, 
and  the  face  becomes  beautiful.  This  softening  and  beautify- 
ing of  the  human  skull  and  the  human  countenance,  upon 
which  Papillault  has  dwelt,  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
evidences  of  the  effects  of  social  evolution  upon  man.  Con- 
siderations of  food,  as  Papillault  says,  cannot  fully  account  for 
these  changes,  for  assuredly  the  European  peasant  of  the 
Middle  Ages  fared  not  much  better  than  the  negro  ;  nor  are 
they  necessarily  the  result  of  growth  in  intelligence,  for,  to  this 
day,  a  very  high  intelligence  may  still  be  found  allied  with  the 
physical  signs  of  the  brute.  The  change  of  the  struggle  for 
existence  from  an  individual  to  a  social  one  is  their  main 
evolutional  source.  Just  as  the  mother  sheltered  her  child 
before  birth,  delaying  his  entrance  into  the  world  until  he 
was  ever  more  prepared  for  it,  so,  in  the  process  of  the  ages, 
the  social  milieu  has  come  to  be  for  the  human  being  in 
the  later  stages  of  his  development  a  sort  of  protective  envelope, 
allowing  him  to  dispense  with  the  natural  physical  arms  and 
defences  with  which  his  remote  ancestors  won  the  battles  of 
their  day.      The  beautifying  of  the  human  face,  in  particular — 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION  445 

even  contact  alone  with  civilisation,  as  Fritsch  has  noted, 
seems  to  give  a  touch  of  it  to  the  savage  child — shows  how  the 
social  milieu  has  been  able  to  modify  profoundly  some  of 
the  most  marked  characteristics  of  the  precursors  of  man.  The 
beauty  we  sometimes  see  in  very  young  children,  their  genius 
(so  often  wrongly  thought  to  be  mere  precocity),  which 
often  the  adult,  who  in  aging  falls  from  the  ideals  of  childhood, 
retains,  and  the  practical  unity  of  childhood  generally  among  all 
races  of  men,  represent  Nature's  effort  to  start  the  individual 
with  as  fair  a  promise  as  she  did  the  race,  when  the  first  infant 
simian,  who  was  destined  to  be  a  man,  foreshadowed  the 
human  race  to  be. 

That  men,  as  they  mature,  do  not  fulfil  perfectly  the  rich 
promise  with  which  childhood  begins,  that  geniuses  are  still 
very  rare,  that  old  age  is  often  useless  both  to  the  individual 
and  to  the  race,  is  to  a  great  extent  the  fault  of  society  itself, 
which  has  not  yet  learned  the  art  of  developing  the  individual 
from  infancy  onward  in  such  fashion  that  he  remains  a  child 
while  childhood  lasts  without  failing  to  be  a  man  when  man- 
hood comes,  nor  yet  accomplished  the  task  of  allowing  the 
genius  to  be  '  born  and  made.'  Human  social  and  educational 
institutions  must  slowly  acquire  the  power  of  strengthening 
manhood  and  rejuvenating  old  age  from  the  fountains  of  child- 
hood, of  fertilising  the  Sahara  of  the  '  age  de  retour '  with  the 
oasis  of  '  green  old  age,'  of  recovering  for  the  race  the  golden 
age  of  old  age  which  the  hurry  and  bustle  of  modern  civilisa- 
tion with  its  attendant  evils  so  often  fails  to  utilise. 

In  a  sense,  genius  itself  is  only  prolonged  infancy,  and  as 
such  is  perfectly  normal,  and  in  no  way  a  neurosis,  a  malady, 
something  abnormal /^r  se.  Society  has  been  so  busy  with  the 
child,  the  general  genius,  that  it  has  not  yet  found  ways  and 
means  for  the  right  growth  and  perfection  of  the  adult  indi- 
vidual genius.  But  his  childliken,ess  assures  him  the  ultimate 
care  and  protection  of  that  same  power  which  has  shaped  in  a 
certain  similitude  woman  and  the  child,  and  is  even  now  seek- 
ing to  shape  him  after  the  manner  of  both  of  these.  Nature, 
in  fact,  seems  to  have  made  woman  somewhat  like  the  child 
in  order  that,  in  growing  up,  man  might  not  depart  too  far 
from  the  original  model.  But  it  is  in  large  part  through  the 
preservation  and  further  development  of  the  resemblances  cf 
the  young  that  the  highest  human  likenesses  and  affinities  are 
secured.     Rather  the  parent  strives  to  be  like  the  babe  than 


446  THE   CHILD 

the  babe  to  be  like  the  parent.  The  things  ofien  but  dimly 
foreshadowed  in  the  child  seem  to  be  those  which  will  one  day 
be  the  most  valued  possession  of  the  race. 

The  variety  and  manifoldness  of  childhood  and  its  pheno- 
mena, the  periods  into  which  human  life  seems  naturally  to 
fall,  the  ebbs  and  flows  of  growth  and  energy  in  the  body 
and  its  members,  the  simultaneity,  temporal  diversity,  periodi- 
city, oscillations,  recapitulations,  overlappings,  etc.,  of  physical, 
mental  and  moral  development,  in  the  child  especially,  have 
attracted  the  attention  of  all  students  of  human  life  and  its 
expressive  products. 

The  '  ages  of  man,'  the  epochs  noticeable  in  the  origin  and 
growth  in  the  individual  of  somatic  characteristics,  anatomical 
and  physiological  peculiarities;  'critical  periods,' physical  and 
intellectual;  epochal  development  of  the  senses,  of  language, 
etc. ;  periodicity  and  epochism  in  the  growth  of  the  sense  of 
self,  of  character,  of  emotiveness,  of  psychic  activities  in  general 
and  in  particular,  of  sociality,  of  religiosity,  of  morahty,  of  the 
various  artistic  activities,  etc.,  furnish  a  multitude  of  facts, 
many  of  which,  seemingly,  cannot  receive  their  interpretation 
except  upon  the  theory  that  they  represent  things  once  im- 
portant, useful,  necessary  to,  or  characteristic  of,  the  race- 
ancestry  of  the  individual,  in  whom  they  are  repeated  more 
or  less  completely. 

The  co-called  '  recapitulation  theory,'  which  many  scientists, 
though  not  all,  hold  to  be  a  necessary  part  of  the  greater 
doctrine  of  evolution,  is  now  interpreted  to  mean  that  the 
individual  repeats  more  or  less  distinctly  the  chief  stages, 
phj'sical  and  mental,  which  the  race  has  passed  through  before 
him.  Embryonal  development  was,  as  Professor  Minot  has 
shown,  only  possible  with  the  appearance  of  the  large  yolk,  the 
further  growth  of  which  practically  abolished  larval  develop- 
ment as  a  further  factor  in  evolution.  With  the  advent  of  the 
human  female,  further  development  of  the  embryo  in  the 
womb  occurred,  and  with  the  coming  of  the  social  milieu  of 
humanity,  a  sort  of  'second  mother.'  time  was  gained  for  just 
such  a  repetitive  process  as  the  recapitulation  theory  implies. 
Just  now,  however,  Nature  seems  struggling  with  the  problem 
how,  by  '  short  cuts,'  abridgmetns, '  telescopings,'  etc.,  to  reduce 
the  repetition  to  a  minimum — her  ultimate  object,  perhaps, 
being  to  render  the  mental  and  moral  recapitulation  as  little 
discernible  in  the  child  as  is  at  present  the  physical.     And  the 


SUMMARY   AND   CONCLUSION  447 

higher  culture  with  which  the  child,  as  compared  with  the 
savage  and  the  young  animal,  finds  himself  surrounded,  is  a 
distinct  aid  to  her  in  this  effort.  Thus  post-natal  recapitulation 
seems  bound  to  be  less  and  less  necessary  with  the  evolution 
of  higher  forms  of  culture  and  enlightenment.  That  Nature 
devised  the  recapitulation  process  in  order  to  gain  time  for 
the  phenomena  connected  with  the  production  and  exploita- 
tion of  man  is  only  half  an  explanation  at  best. 

An  earlier  form  of  the  recai)itulation  theory — that  there  was 
a  parallelism  between  the  way  in  which  the  individual  attained 
culture  and  that  in  which  the  race  had  done  so — dating  back  to 
Rousseau  at  least,  was  further  extended  by  later  educational 
philosophers  to  mean  that  the  so-called  '  culture-epochs '  in  the 
history  of  the  race  were  repeated  in  the  history  of  the  indi- 
vidual, a  view  made  much  of  by  the  modern  school  of  Herbartians. 
The  best  scientific  investigations,  both  of  the  child  and  of  the 
various  races  of  men,  have  shown  how  difficult  the  establish- 
ment and  delimitation  of  such  '  epochs '  are,  and  to  how  great 
an  extent  they  are  subject  to  the  creative,  destructive  and 
transforming  influences  of  cosmic  and  social  environments, 
incidents  of  progress,  national  and  individual  history,  etc. 
The  consistent  evolution  of  a  child  through  these  '  stages '  or 
'  epochs '  is  as  hard  to  verify  as  is  that  of  a  race.  Nevertheless, 
the  lines  of  advancement  of  mankind  in  general  do  seem  to  be 
paralleled  in  the  development  of  the  child,  in  outline  at  least, 
though  exactness  here  is  out  of  question.  The  power  of  environ- 
ment to  shape  humanity,  irrespective  of  the  '  necessity '  for  recap- 
itulation, has  not  been  taken  into  full  account  by  the  extreme 
advocates  of  the  'culture  epoch  '  theory.  And  Nature  seems 
even  now  endeavouring  to  make  the  '  recapitulation '  less  and 
less  in  the  mental,  as  she  has  already  done  in  the  physical, 
world.  The  development  in  man  of  individuality  and  character 
to  an  extent  unknown  in  the  animal  species  beneath  him  is  an 
important  factor  working  to  this  end.  Indeed,  as  the  higher 
and  more  essentially  human  traits  of  a  mental  and  moral  order 
permit  with  increasing  stability  the  formation  of  character  and 
its  utilisation  in  the  evolutionary  process,  such  recapitulation 
as  now  exists  is  bound,  like  the  struggle  for  existence,  to  be 
profoundly  modified,  if  not  practically  abolished.  The  child 
of  to-day  comes  into  contact  with  almost  every  epoch  of  the 
past  history  of  his  race,  such  is  the  constitution  of  the  social 
classes  of  our  great  modern  communities,  and  the  variety  and 


448  THE   CHILD 

complexity  of  their  culture,  and  being  culture-bearer  himself, 
it  is  not  absolutely  necessary  that  he  should  be  a  nomad,  a 
fisher,  a  hunter,  a  savage.  Much  of  all  these  stages  survives 
in  the  people  about  him,  and  by  imitation  he  can  acquire, 
perhaps,  all  that  is  really  needed.  Moreover,  the  progress  of 
the  individual,  like  that  of  the  race,  is  never  really  in  a  straight 
line.  The  rhythmic  phenomena,  therefore,  of  individual  and 
racial  development  are  perhaps  just  as  important  as  the  re- 
capitulory,  and  with  these  are  associated  the  '  critical  periods,' 
'crises,'  etc.,  of  life.  The  parallelisms  and  interactions  of 
physical  and  mental  growth  and  activity,  the  periodicities  of 
growth  and  rest,  of  action  and  reaction,  productivity  and 
receptivity,  exaltation  and  depression,  intellectual  and  bodily 
exercise,  the  variations,  ebbings  and  fiowings  that  seem  to 
characterise  every  organ  of  the  body  and  every  activity  and 
function  of  every  organ,  the  seeming  dualisms,  oppositions, 
multiple  personalities,  the  detours  and  divergencies  due  to 
cosmic  influences  and  the  ever-changing  environment,  the 
flashings  of  genius  that  alternate  with  dulness  —  all  these, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  multitude  of  like  phenomena  upon 
which  the  school  impinges,  might  justify  the  opinion  of  those 
who  declare  that  the  child  does  repeat  all  that  the  race  has 
experienced  before  him,  but  they  will,  doubtless,  most  of  them 
at  least,  find  other  and  more  satisfactory  explanations. 

More  and  more,  as  we  study  the  child,  we  perceive  the 
truth  of  Landor's  wise  observation  :  '  In  every  child  there  are 
many  children,  but  coming  forth  year  after  year,  each  some- 
what like  and  somewhat  varying.'  And  even  in  old  age,  the 
'  second  childhood '  of  man,  as  it  has  been  for  centuries  termed, 
there  is  something  of  this  manifoldness  and  variety.  All  is  not 
waste  that  is  old,  and  a  true  '  second  childhood,'  possessing 
many  of  the  best  things  of  the  first,  can  often  be  discerned  in 
the  '  green  old  age,'  the  oasis  of  the  desert  of  retoiir.  There 
is  evolution  amid  involution,  a  parting  glory  like  that  of  the 
setting  sun.  Nature,  indeed,  would  appear  to  be  busying  her- 
self with  the  creation  between  adult  age  and  death  of  an  epoch 
which  shall  be  consciously  advantageous  to  the  race  as  the  first 
childhood  has  been  unconsciously.  Some  time,  with  the  in- 
crease of  health,  peace  and  the  essentially  human  social  con- 
ditions, and  the  abolition  of  the  destructive  and  degenerative 
factors  of  modern  civilisation,  enough  of  the  energy,  variety 
and  manifoldness  of  the  first  childhood  of  the  individual  may 


SUMMARY   AND   CONCLUSION  449 

be  preserved  to  re-create  'second  childhood  '  and  extend  'green 
old  nge '  as  beneficially  and  as  advantageously  to  mankind  as 
the  prolongation  of  human  infancy. 

In  our  consideration  of  language,  which  has  been  called 
the  first  of  human  arts,  we  found  that  the  development  of  the 
individual  and  that  of  the  race  seemed  to  coincide  in  many 
points  of  a  general  character.  Sign  language,  the  predecessor 
of  spoken  language,  is  of  great  importance  both  in  the  early 
history  of  the  individual  and  in  that  of  the  race,  for  while 
with  his  voice  man  was  able  to  imitate  sounds  in  nature  and 
the  utterances  of  his  fellow-beings,  of  animals,  etc.,  the  em- 
ployment of  gesture  made  it  possible  to  'imitate'  and  to 
indicate  movement,  form,  place,  size,  direction,  distance, 
action,  and  a  variety  of  other  things.  Indeed,  the  very 
development  of  gesture  as  an  art  may  have  been  the  cause  of 
the  laggard  growth  of  oral  speech.  The  story  of  the  child  and 
the  story  of  the  race  both  seem  to  furnish  proof  of  this. 
Noteworthy,  amid  what  is  perhaps  a  general  resemblance  of 
sign-language  all  over  the  globe,  are  the  frequent  divergences 
and  dissimilarities  in  the  signs  used  by  primitive  peoples  of 
apparently  equal  grades  of  culture,  together  with  the  some- 
what less  remarkable  differences  between  individual  children, 
even  in  the  same  household.  When  primitive  man  and  the 
child  abandon  gesture  for  spoken  language,  it  is  because  the 
latter  affords  a  means  of  expressing  with  less  effort  a  greater 
number  of  new  thoughts  and  feelings.  A  higher  form  of  the 
same  change  is  seen  when  the  genius  adopts  a  special  form  of 
language,  such  as  poetry,  for  example,  to  express  his  thoughts 
and  ideals. 

With  respect  to  onomatopoeia,  reduplication,  use  of  vowels 
and  consonants,  word-invention,  syntax,  use  of  the  parts  of 
speech,  order  of  words,  compound  words,  sematology,  name- 
giving,  folk-lore  of  the  word,  etc.,  many  parallel  facts  can  be 
noted  in  the  language  of  the  savage  and  barbarian  and  that  of 
the  child.  But  here,  again,  there  are  great  individual  differ- 
ences, and  great  differences  between  the  various  primitive  races. 
With  the  child — the  impinging  upon  him  of  the  parental  and 
family  environment  may  account  for  it  in  part — both  onoma- 
topoeia and  reduplication  (and  the  same  thing  may  be  said  of 
not  a  few  other  linguistic  peculiarities)  are  less  of  an  art  than 
they  are  with  the  savage,  and  form  much  less  significant  factors 
in  the  development  of  speech.     With  primitive  man  the  genius 


450  THE   CHILD 

of  the  language  of  each  tribe  is  permitted  to  exercise  its  in- 
fluence upon  the  onomatopceic  and  redupUcative  elements  in 
the  vocabulary,  while  with  the  child  little  opportunity  for  such 
action  really  occurs.  The  child  is,  early  in  life,  furnished  with 
so  much  that  he  can  imitate,  or  reproduce  in  worn-down  or 
attritional  fashion,  that  he  is  not  called  upon  to  exert  himself 
nearly  as  much  as  are  the  earliest  possessors  of  savage  or 
barbarous  speech.  The  onomatopoeic  theory  of  the  origin  of 
human  language  gains  much  more  evidence  of  its  probability 
from  the  consideration  of  the  speech  of  primitive  peoples  than 
from  the  study  of  the  language  of  children.  On  the  other 
hand,  theories  of  the  development  of  human  language  from 
an  original  speech  of  vowels  or  of  certain  consonants  and 
vowels  find  more  data  to  substantiate  them  in  the  language  of 
children  than  in  that  of  primitive  peoples.  Theories  about 
the  '  roots  '  of  language  really  meet  with  little  success  from  the 
consideration  of  either.  The  sentence-word  of  the  child  and 
the  sentence-word  of  the  American  Indian  are  two  very 
different  things,  and  not  a  few  languages  of  primitive  peoples 
seem  to  show  very  few  even  general  resemblances  to  child- 
speech.  The  interchanges  existing  between  certain  conson- 
ants appear  to  be  a  marked  feature  of  many  primitive  tongues 
and  of  the  language  of  very  many  children,  while  the  vowels 
seem  often  much  less  significant  with  the  latter  than  with  the 
former.  The  great  versatility  of  primitive  races  and  of 
children  in  the  learning  of  language  (even  '  clicks '  do  not 
present  serious  difficulties)  is  noted  all  over  the  globe,  and 
there  does  not  exist,  apparently,  any  language  which  it  is  not 
possible  for  the  children  of  any  other  people  to  acquire  if  the 
beginning  is  made  soon  enough. 

The  '  original '  languages  of  children,  of  few  of  which  even 
imperfect  records  are  extant,  offer  a  very  interesting  field  for 
comparative  research,  and  it  is  these  instinct  forms  of  speech, 
which  at  puberty  often  revive  again,  that  may  best  be  studied 
in  relation  to  the  primitive  tongues  of  the  race— these  languages 
that  are  the  child's  speech  and  not  our  language,  what  he 
creates,  not  what  we  impose  upon  him.  These  original 
languages,  as  Mr  Hale  has  shown,  exhibit  great  individual 
differences — one  resembling  ^lalay,  another  Chinese,  another 
Hebrew — in  general  constitution.  Here,  Mr  Hale  tells,  lies 
the  explanation  of  the  diversity  of  human  languages,  origin- 
ating in  the  perpetuation  of  linguistic  variations  due  to  the 


SUMMARY   AND   CONCLUSION  45  I 

language-instinct  of  children.  There  is  much  to  be  said  in 
favour  of  this  view  that  among  savage  peoples  linguistic 
diversities  are,  to  a  large  extent  at  least,  the  creations  of 
children,  which  the  over-indulgence  of  j^arents,  their  favour  or 
their  mental  indolence,  aids  in  perpetuating,  and  it  has  received 
the  adherence  of  many  distinguished  authorities.  Less  im- 
portant for  comparative  purposes  are  the  so-called  'secret 
languages '  of  children,  the  great  artificiality  of  which  is  often 
redeemed  at  rare  intervals  by  an  original  word  or  linguistic 
contrivance  which  brings  them  into  the  range  of  primitive 
speech. 

In  word-meanings  and  the  interpretation  of  words,  the 
creation  of  new  words  on  the  spot,  etc.,  the  savage  and  the 
child  often  resemble  one  another  very  closely,  as  we  have  seen 
from  the  comparison  of  the  vocabularies  of  children  and  those 
of  primitive  peoples.  And  both  of  them  resemble  in  these 
respects  the  old  dictionary-makers  of  our  civilised  races.  The 
confusion  of  the  name  and  the  thing,  the  belief  in  the  real 
existence  of  the  word,  etc.,  are  common  alike  to  the  child,  the 
savage,  nnd  the  ignorant  peasant,  with  all  of  whom  often  the 
object  is  correctly  named  in  their  own  speech  only,  and  a 
change  of  name  really  entails  an  alteration  in  the  thing  itself. 

As  to  vocabulary,  both  the  child  and  the  savage  have 
suffered  from  under-estimation.  Careful  investigations  of  the 
nmiiber  of  words  in  primitive  speech  and  in  the  language  of 
children,  while  revealing  notable  individual  and  tribal  differ- 
ences, have  resulted  in  the  overthrow  of  the  views  of  Max 
Miiller  and  other  authorities,  who  assigned  to  the  savage  and 
the  child  vocabularies  very  much  less  in  extent  than  they 
really  possessed.  The  evidence  on  this  point  seems  now  in- 
dubitable. Those  who  emphasise  the  phenomena  of  involution 
in  man  have  seen  in  the  language  of  the  insane,  the  mentally 
excited,  those  suffering  from  aphasia  and  kindred  speech 
disturbances,  in  the  progressive  disappearance  of  speech  in  the 
individual,  a  parallel  (inversely)  with  its  development  in  the 
normal  child.  A  parallel  with  the  savage  also  has  been 
instituted  here.  It  must  be  said,  however,  that  these  'in- 
verse' parallels  are  hardly  so  well  substantiated  as  are  some 
of  those  concerning  the  normal  growth  and  development  of 
language  in  the  child  and  the  race. 

Observation  of  the  differences  between  oral  and  written 
speech  (drawing  is  an  early  form  of  the  latter)  in  the  develop- 

30 


452 


THE   CHILD 


ment  of  the  individual  and  of  the  race  would  seem  to  indicate 
that  the  former,  which,  apart  from  all  other  considerations,  is 
in  its  varied  forms  (talking,  crying,  shouting,  singing,  etc.)  a 
healthy  exercise,  should,  in  the  home  and  in  the  school,  be 
given  a  considerable  development  before  the  latter  is  attempted 
—the  teaching  of  reading  and  writing  being  postponed  to 
somewhere  about  the  tenth  year,  when  the  physical  and 
mental  faculties  of  the  individual  are  in  a  condition  justifying 
the  attempt  to  acquire  the  later  art.  The  ear  and  tongue  of 
the  child,  as  was  the  case  with  the  race,  should  be  given 
a  good  deal  of  exercise  and  training  before  the  serfdom  of  the 
eye  and  the  hand  to  the  alphabet,  the  copy-book  and  the 
dictionary  begins.  More  than  one  language  can  readily  be 
acquired  by  the  child  before  reading  and  writing  are  entered 
upon,  for  there  were  polyglots  among  primitive  peoples  before 
any  alphabet  or  hieroglyphic  system  had  been  born.  These 
views  are  further  emphasised  by  the  fact  of  the  difficulties 
besetting  the  child  who  is  beginning  to  compose  in  writing,  as 
the  letters  of  high  school  pupils  and  their  themes  abundantly 
exemplify. 

Music,  in  some  form  or  other,  is  known  to  all  the  tribes  of 
mankind,  and,  if  we  believe  Major  Powell,  its  growth  in  the 
individual  is  parallel  with  its  growth  in  the  race.  From  the 
dance,  earliest  of  the  aesthetic  arts,  was  born  the  extension  of 
rhythm  ;  when  poetry  came  melody  was  developed ;  from  the 
necessities  of  the  drama  grew  up  harmony,  while  the  revela- 
tions of  scientific  knowledge  made  harmony  possible.  Music 
itself  was  created  'when  the  rhythm  of  motion  became  the 
rhythm  of  emotion.'  The  characteristic  dances  of  savage 
and  barbarous  peoples  (not  their  later  war-dances)  are  of  a 
merry,  rollicking  sort  and  find  their  parallel  in  the  ring-games 
and  other  dance-plays  of  the  children  of  modern  civilised 
parents,  as  Mr  Newell,  Mrs  Gomme  and  others  have  shown. 
The  refrains  and  songs  connected  with  these  games  also 
reveal  resemblances  between  the  savage  and  the  child. 
From  nonsense-refrains  both  rise  to  the  dignity  of  historical 
and  epic  verse — and  the  dance  has  become  a  poem.  In 
singing,  at  labour  in  the  fields,  on  historical  occasions,  at 
religious  and  other  festivals,  harmony  grows  out  of  the  grouping 
of  voices,  and  the  dramatised  myths  of  primitive  peoples 
possess  a  sort  of  kinship  with  the  song-games  of  children. 
Science  gives  the  final  touch  by  makivig  possible  numbers  of 


SUMMARY   AND   CONCLUSION  453 

sweet  instruments  and  the  training  of  expert  voices,  and  the 
simple,  original  time  of  the  'ring-around-a-rosy '  becomes  a 
symphony,  and  its  accompaniment  a  sublime  poem. 

Not  only  is  music  common  to  all  races  of  man,  but  in  each 
particular  race  the  individual  must  often  be  very  idiotic  not 
to  evince  at  some  time  a  liking  for,  an  interest  in,  some  sort  of 
music.  But  among  normal  individuals,  even  in  childhood,  as 
among  the  human  races,  the  differences  in  appreciation  of  and 
abihty  in  music  are  often  enormous,  while  the  effects  of 
the  various  sorts  of  music  exhibit  equally  great  racial  and 
individual  divergences.  The  power  of  music  as  a  therapeutic 
method,  as  an  aid  to  toil,  and  as  a  social  factor,  is  noted  among 
all  peoples,  and  is  especially  marked  with  some  of  the  'lower' 
races  and  with  many  children.  The  effects  of  mood,  season, 
character,  temperament,  etc.,  upon  musical  ability  (racial  and 
individual)  ought  to  receive  attention  in  modern  musical 
education,  which  has  so  often,  through  the  artificialities  of  reading 
music  killed  the  older  song-spirit.  Here,  as  with  language,  the 
record  of  the  tongue  and  the  ear  ought  to  come  first.  The 
child  may  very  well  retrace  the  history  of  the  race  here  and 
be  schooled  by  his  own  traditional  games  and  the  folk-songs 
whose  music  and  whose  poetic  content  lie  so  near  the  emotions 
of  his  own  soul.  Like  music,  something  of  a  common 
aesthetic  instinct  seems  to  belong  to  all  the  human  race. 
The  child  is  one  with  the  savage  in  picking  up  the  pebble 
from  the  beach  or  the  bright  feather  from  the  ground. 
The  prevalence  of  the  elementary  forms  of  the  chief  aesthetic 
arts  in  childhood  and  early  manhood  is  much  greater  than  is 
commonly  believed  —  rhyming,  chanting,  drawing,  painting, 
story-telling,  etc.  So,  too,  with  the  '  mania  for  ornamentation,' 
from  whatever  cause  it  may  have  arisen  ;  the  race,  like  the 
negro  boy,  as  Mr  Bates  observed,  was  once  content  to  go 
barefoot  but  was  'suffering  for  a  breast-pin,'  or  some  other 
ornament.  The  esthetic  sense  of  some  of  the  lowest  races  of 
man  has  been  underestimated  by  most  authorities,  just  as 
Perez  has  underestimated  that  of  children.  The  love  of 
flowers  exhibited  by  some  Polynesian  and  American  Indian 
peoples  is,  indeed,  very  childlike.  The  ability  of  the  child 
and  of  primitive  man  to  judge  the  beauty  of  the  human 
countenance  has  also  been  rated  too  low. 

Between  the  earliest  known  art  of  man  and   the  art  of 
children  many  interesting  resemblances  have  been  noted  by  the 


454  THE   CHILD 

numerous  authorities  who,  of  late  years,  have  studied  this 
subject.  Boccaccio,  in  the  Decameron,  makes  Scalza  compare 
the  features  of  the  Baron ici,  who  '  were  formed  when  Nature 
was  in  her  infancy,  and  before  she  was  perfect  at  her  work,'  to 
'  what  children  make  when  they  first  learn  to  draw,' and  this 
comparison  has  been  much  elaborated  since  his  day.  In 
general,  while  the  drawings  of  primitive  peoples  are  often,  by 
reason  of  the  developed  adult  hand  and  the  greater  observation- 
gift,  much  better  than  those  of  civilised  children,  their 
modellings  and  sculptures  are  often  by  no  means  so  superior. 
The  child  and  the  savage  both  err  most  frequently  in  the 
sense  of  proportion ;  the  Kootenay  Indian  draws  a  mouse  as 
big  as  a  buffalo,  a  wolf  as  small  as  a  cat,  just  as  the  child  does, 
but  with  both  the  size  of  the  material  upon  which  the  drawing 
is  to  be  made,  the  nature  of  the  drawing  instrument  and  the 
customary  idea  of  animal-character  have  sometimes  to  be 
taken  into  account.  Some  savages,  also,  like  some  children, 
seem  miniature-mmded,  others  gross-minded.  In  the  art  of 
savages  there  is  often  more  'art  striving  to  be  art,'  while  with 
children  it  is  not  so  much  a  question  of  reproducing  the  man, 
animal,  house,  etc.,  artistically  as  it  is  of  describing  them  as 
they  remember  them.  Children,  more  than  savages,  are  in- 
fluenced by  the  accidents  and  incidents  of  the  circumstances 
under  which  their  drawing  is  executed.  They  will  dot  a  horse 
all  over  to  show  that  it  was  snowing,  or  continue  to  draw 
every  horse  for  a  week  or  more  just  as  they  saw  it  when  first 
observed.  The  influence  of  civilised  environment  also  creates 
a  difference  in  the  child  as  compared  with  the  savage.  The 
drawings  of  a  hunter-race  must  inevitably  differ  in  many  respects 
from  those  of  a  child  in  one  of  our  great  cities.  It  may  be,  as 
Grosse  holds,  that  the  art  of  children  is  characteristically 
symbolic  rather  than  natural,  and  that  the  tendency  to 
caricature,  while  greater  among  savages  than  commonly 
thought  to  be  the  case,  is  less  than  among  children  in  their 
epoch  of  productive  and  creative  art.  Children  and  primitive 
man  possess  in  common  a  keen  love  for  the  portrayal  of 
animals  (life  and  motion  especially  attracting  them),  and  agree 
also  in  a  common  neglect  of  plant-life.  The  child,  especially, 
is  in  love  with  the  human  form ;  as  Ricci  says,  he  '  begins 
where  God  left  off,'  with  the  highest  form  in  creation. 

The  great  artistic  skill  of  the  men  of  the  river-drift  period 
in  prehistoric  France  is  due,  no  doubt,  as  Grosse  holds,  to  '  the 


SUMMARY   AND   CONCLUSION  455 

partnership  of  observation-gift  and  manual  dexterity.'  So 
also  at  the  period  of  the  highest  development  of  painting  and 
sculpture  in  Italy,  the  great  artists  spent  their  apprenticeship 
in  the  workshops  of  goldsmiths  and  in  other  industries  where 
manual  dexterity  was  to  be  acquired.  The  mistake  of 
education  today  lies  in  making  manual  training  a  fetish  per  se, 
instead  of  following  the  race-order  and  letting  it  naturally 
precede  and  prepare  for  the  higher  handicraft  of  the  painter 
and  sculptor.  Just  as  the  sexually-precocious  individual  really 
discounts  beforehand  all  the  pleasures  and  interests  of  man- 
hood and  womanhood,  so  the  child,  with  course  after  course  of 
manual  training,  dries  up  the  springs  whence  later  art  may 
flow.  With  the  children  of  primitive  peoples  there  would 
seem  to  be  somewhat  more  spontaneity  in  drawing  and  an 
earlier  development,  as  compared  with  civilised  children,  but 
more  evidence  is  needed  on  this  point.  The  influence 
of  material  is  very  great  with  both  the  savage  and  the  child, 
and  the  introduction  of  a  new  drawing  material  seems  with 
both  to  produce  an  interregnum  of  baser  art.  Just  as  pottery 
bears  upon  its  surface  the  proof  of  its  origination  from  clay-lined 
wicker-work,  so  the  drawings  of  certain  animals  by  Indians 
reveal  the  fact  that  it  is  the  spread-out  skin  of  the  creature  and 
not  the  living  being  that  is  before  their  mind's-eye,  and  the 
free-hand  drawings  of  school-children  afford  abundant  evidence 
of  the  influence  of  the  stick-laying,  geometrically-controlled  art 
of  the  kindergarten,  trees,  men,  and  everything  else  suffering 
from  the  angle,  the  triangle,  square,  etc.  Both  the  savage  and 
the  child  revel  more  in  the  freedom  of  the  curved  line  with 
all  its  variations  than  in  the  diagrammatism  of  the  straight 
line  school,  which  appears  to  be  despised  alike  by  priiTiitive 
and  by  the  highest  human  genius.  From  scribble  to  eloquent 
picture  both  the  child  and  the  race  progress,  and  many  of  the 
intermediary  stages  with  both  are  almost  indistinguishable  as 
the  confusion  of  primitive  pictography  with  child-art  shows. 
Children  and  savages  resemble  each  other,  again,  in  their 
'  illustrated  stories,'  for  even  some  of  the  earliest  products  of 
art  with  prehistoric  man  appear  to  be  intended  for  the  same 
purpose  as  those  which  the  child  so  often  scatters  through  his 
themes  and  essays.  Drawing,  being  the  natural  preparatory 
stage  for  writing,  may  be  as  misused  like  manual  training, 
and  the  later  chirographic  and  descriptive  art  be  mined 
thereby ;  the  geniuses  of  the  nursery  are  practically  extinguished 


456  THE   CHILD 

by  the  time  the  high  school  is  reached,  when  the  classic  model 
finishes  the  killing  process  by  again  debasing  the  naivete, 
spontaneity  and  real  inspiration  of  child-art,  all  that  is  now  left 
being  'a  few  clever  ornamentalists,' and  a  host  of  disgusted 
youths  and  maidens,  who  will  need  to  learn  again  how  to  be 
in  love  with  art. 

In  considering  the  resemblances  and  differences  between 
the  child  and  the  savage,  we  saw  the  difficulties  involved  in 
the  theory  that  the  child  is  '  a  little  compressed,  synthetic 
picture  of  all  the  stages  of  man's  evolution,'  how  sometimes 
the  savage  and  the  ignorant  among  our  civilised  communities 
seemed  to  stand  together  over  against  the  child,  while  at  other 
times,  as  surely,  the  child  and  the  savage  seemed  intimately 
related,  as  opposed  to  all  other  groups  of  human  kind.  The 
variety  in  savagery  is  as  great  as  the  variety  in  childhood,  and 
it  is  no  more  easy  to  know  the  child  than  to  know  the  savage. 
Between  certain  unspoiled  primitive  peoples  now  existing  and 
the  child  there  is  often  discernible  a  parallel  in  those  things 
which  are  best  in  the  individual  and  the  race — absolute  trust, 
honesty,  guilelessness,  sympathy,  comradeship,  naivete.,  intuitive 
genius,  love  of  peace  and  play-activity,  religiousness  and  many 
of  the  virtues  that  are  more  or  less  passive  or  quiescent;  while, 
on  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  difificult  to  find  savage  and 
barbarous  peoples,  equally  primitive,  apparently,  who  afford  a 
parallel  with  what  is  most  unlovely,  ungraceful  and  uncomely 
in  children — distrust,  passion,  misoneism,  exaggerated  unrest, 
pugnacity,  lying,  teasing  and  bullying,  thieving  and  destructive- 
ness.  For  those  who  believe  in  '  types '  of  character  and 
individuality  in  children,  the  suggestion  is  inevitable  here 
that  such  'types'  may  exist  among  races  also.  We  are  yet 
without  thoroughgoing  studies  of  the  'lowest  savages,'  who, 
as  Topinard  says,  'd'fter  in  character,  disposition  and  manners 
according  to  the  more  or  less  difficult  conditions  in  which 
they  are  found,  and  according  as  they  have  more  or  less 
connection  with  other  men ' ;  and  we  lack,  in  like  manner, 
thorougligoing  studies  of  children,  who  differ  in  the  same  way 
and  for  the  same  reasons. 

The  mind  of  the  child  and  the  mind  of  the  savage,  when 
differences  due  to  the  presence  of  manhood  and  womanhood 
in  the  latter,  diversity  of  environment,  influence  of  higher 
culture,  prolonged  infancy,  social  environment,  etc.,  have  been 
taken  into  consideration,  present  many  interesting  parallels  of 


SUMMARY   AND   CONCLUSION  45/ 

a  general  sort.  Ndiveie  that  touches  upon  genius,  suggesti- 
biUty  of  great  extent  and  sometimes  of  a  very  high  order, 
resemblances  in  mental  association,  modes  of  thought  and  of 
thought-expression,  dream-Hfe,  mind-content,  imitation,  con- 
servatism, mythological  ideas,  personal  and  social  ideals,  sense- 
domination,  love  of  analogy  and  symbolism,  use  and  products 
of  the  imagination,  love  of  nature  and  the  world  of  plant  and 
animal  life,  poetry  and  story-telling,  myth-making,  personifica- 
tion and  other  primal  arts,  language,  art,  music,  etc.  It  must 
be  remembered,  however,  that  it  is  now  the  savage,  now  the 
child,  who  in  one  of  these  things  touches  the  highest  genius  or 
sinks  into  the  deepest  ignorance — the  capacity  for  mental 
progress  and  development  rarely  finding  equal  expression  in 
both  everywhere  and  at  all  times.  All  men,  even  the  most 
highly  civilised,  have,  as  von  den  Steinen  puts  it,  still  much 
of  the  savage  as  an  honourable  possession  in  heart  and  brain, 
and  exactly  how  much,  and  in  what  manner,  the  child  is  more 
savage  than  the  adult  is  often  quite  a  relative  matter.  In 
comparison  with  the  child,  the  savage,  who  so  often  anticipates 
higher  culture,  higher  morals,  higher  arts,  suffers  because  we 
seem  inevitably  to  rate  ourselves  higher  and  him  lower  than 
each  really  is. 

The  happier  fortune  of  primitive  peoples  in  the  days  when 
the  first  great  civilisations  were  beginning  to  arise,  and  when 
race-questions  could  not  be  decided  by  reason  of  mere  social 
taboo,  suggest  that  the  failure  of  more  recent  culture  in  dealing 
with  the  so-called  '  lower '  races  has  been  largely  one  of 
method,  and  the  same  thing  has  to  be  said  of  the  attempts  of 
the  'higher'  races  at  educating  their  children.  Favourable 
conditions,  social  equality,  interest  and  opportunity,  personal 
influence,  historic  incident,  have  made  'higher'  races  out  of 
savages,  as  they  still  make  great  men  and  geniuses  out  of 
apparently  commonplace  children.  There  is  certainly  a 
parallel  between  the  rise  of  genius  in  the  individual  and  its 
development  in  the  race,  but  it  has  hitherto  been  but  very 
imperfectly  worked  out. 

There  is  abundant  evidence  to  show  that  the  children  of 
primitive  peoples,  whatever  the  condition  of  adults  may  be,  are 
quite  as  well  endowed  mentally  as  the  children  of  civilised 
peoples,  the  great  difference  between  them  existing  in  the 
greater  number  of  learnable  things  which  the  environment  of 
the  latter  provides,  and  the  care  and  trouble  which  the  com- 


458  THE   CHILD 

munity  takes  to  make  the  acquisition  of  these  things  possible. 
Not  the  minds  so  much  as  the  schools  of  the  two  stages  of 
human  evolution  differ.  The  much-discussed  'arrest  of  mental 
development,'  which  is  thought  to  make  so  great  a  difference 
between  the  child  and  the  adult  among  primitive  peoples,  can 
be  paralleled  in  most  civilised  communities,  although  to  a 
much  less  extent,  and  it  would  seem  to  indicate  that  the 
'  arrest '  is  not  of  such  an  irreversible  kind  as  is  believed  by 
many  authorities,  not  any  less  reversible  than  the  well-known 
arrest  of  mental  development  in  the  individual,  which  is  one 
of  the  marked  accompaniments  of  the  pubertal  epoch.  An 
exhaustive  study  of  the  pubertal  epoch  in  the  individual  must 
throw  some  light  upon  the  difference  between  the  adult  and 
the  young  savage,  and  explain  some  of  the  facts  upon  which 
the  theory  of  '  arrest '  is  based.  In  general,  the  comparison  of 
the  adult  savage  with  the  child  of  civilised  communities  reveals 
the  fact  that,  with  the  limitations  discussed  earlier  in  this 
volume,  we  may  say  that  the  savage  is  a  child,  the  child  a 
savage;  but  both  of  them  much  more,  for  Nature  never  quite 
repeats  herself. 

From  the  point  of  view  that  all  crime  is  something,  once 
judged  indifferent  or  commendable,  which  mankind,  with  the 
enlightenment  of  progress,  has  now  chosen  to  condemn,  the 
child,  who  repeats  in  brief  the  history  of  the  race,  might  be 
termed  criminal.  But  when  we  consider  the  narrow  margin 
which  with  adults  still  divides  the  good  from  the  evil  on  the 
one  hand,  and  on  the  other  the  remarkable  absence  of  crime 
among  many  primitive  peoples,  and  in  addition  the  fact  that 
the  child  is  the  race-bearing  element  par  excellence  of  mankind, 
we  must  hesitate  so  to  stigmatise  him.  Recent  data  seem 
more  and  more  to  strengthen  the  view  that  crime  is  the  result 
of  madness  rather  than  of  badness,  while  in  the  child  it  is 
largely  the  result  of  neither.  We  must  eliminate  also  the 
(juestion  of  degeneracy,  for  if  anyone  is  degenerate  it  is 
rather  the  adult  than  tlie  young.  Crime  is  often  a  product  of 
childhood  without  any  real  criminality  on  the  part  of  the 
child.  The  limited  range  of  juvenile  crime — theft,  destructive- 
ness,  assault — while  offering  a  point  of  comparison  with  many 
savage  and  barbarous  peoples,  practically  settles  the  matter  of 
the  criminality  per  se  of  the  child.  Heredity,  environmental 
influences  and  stimuli,  imitation,  example,  etc.,  make  criminals 
of  children,  as  they  often  do  of  adults,  and  opportunity  is 


SUMMARY   AND   CONCLUSION  459 

even  more  powerful  with  the  last  than  it  is  with  either  the 
child  or  the  savage.  If  the  criminal  be  a  degenerate,  and  the 
child  merely  an  undeveloped  being,  only  a  seeming  parallel 
can  exist  between  them  here.  Crime  is  no  more  inherent  in 
the  child  than  in  the  race ;  the  child  is  not  monstrous  unless 
the  race  is. 

The  tkcks  of  past  racial  sins  may,  perhaps,  be  detected  in 
him,  as  in  the  genius,  but  that  he  is  criminal  because  he  is  a 
child  is  as  doubtful  as  it  is  that  the  genius  is  often  near  the 
lunatic  or  the  physically  decrepit  because  he  is  a  genius.  The 
'  faults '  of  the  one,  like  those  of  the  other,  are  incidents,  not 
essentials.  The  child,  too,  is  often  made  worse  by  having  to 
grow  to  become  an  adult,  for  nature  has  by  no  means  provided 
him  with  perfect  society  in  the  company  of  his  parents,  his 
immediate  environment,  the  school,  etc.  Frequently,  also, 
the  child,  like  the  savage,  is  passively  bad  only,  as  he  is  often, 
too,  only  passively  good.  He  lacks  the  wisdom  to  make  him 
honest  rather  than  he  possesses  the  instinct  of  theft.  He  kills 
because  he  is  ignorant  of  what  life  and  death  are,  rather  than 
because  he  rejoices  in  depriving  anything  of  life.  He  destroys 
through  the  impulse  to  mnke  a  change,  to  see  things  different, 
rather  than  from  an  instinct  to  wantonly  annihilate.  The 
variety  of  temperament,  individuality  and  character  which 
exists  here  can  no  more  be  neglected  in  childhood  than  in 
adult  age.  Each  of  us,  it  has  been  said,  has  a  criminal  asleep 
in  his  brain,  and  it  is  not  always  because  one  is  a  child  that 
the  evidence  of  his  existence  appears,  or  because  one  is  an 
adult  that  he  is  repressed. 

In  the  matter  of  crime,  the  child,  in  the  natural  course  of 
evolution,  ought  to  repeat  the  history  of  the  race  more  passively, 
less  actively,  as  civilisation  advances,  and  the  social  environ- 
ment assumes  ever  greater  importance  as  the  shaping  factor  of 
humanity.  Nature  is  striving  to  'make  the  punishment  fit  the 
crime'  by  gradually  abolishing  the  latter — and  the  child  is 
leading  here,  as  elsewhere.  To  the  child  as  yet  all  things  are 
possible,  good,  bad  and  indifferent,  but  the  healthier  social 
life  of  mankind,  more  even  than  education,  weights  the  scales 
for  the  good. 

That  the  'ascent  of  man'  has  not  been  accomplished 
without  his  body  and  his  mind  retaining  in  more  or  less 
rudimentary  form  many  organs  and  characteristics  which 
are   now   useless,   and   sometimes   even   harmful   to   him,   in 


460  THE   CHILD 

his  present  condition,  can  hardly  be  doubted.  It  is  never- 
theless also  true  that  many  excrescences,  pathological  forma- 
tions, and  accidental  resemblances  have  been  set  down  as 
'atavisms,'  although  they  were  merely  the  results  of  nutritional 
and  other  disturbances  of  the  organism,  and  not  traceable  to 
any  ancestor  of  man,  who,  did  he  possess  them  all,  must  have 
been  a  veritable  monster.  Variations  due  to  the  mechanical 
and  other  conditions  involved  in  the  evolutionary  process  itself, 
variations  due  to  sex,  age,  temperament,  character,  individuality, 
variations  produced  by  interferences  with  embryonic  growth, 
and  by  the  influences  of  the  cosmic  and  social  environment  of 
man,  need  to  be  excluded  before  we  can  rightly  understand 
the  phenomena  of  'atavism  '  or  'discontinuous  heredity.' 

There  are  physical  atavisms  such  as  those  noted  in  the 
embryo  and  the  young  of  man  (the  gill-slits  and  their  train  of 
effects)  which  carry  us  back  to  amphibian  and  piscine  life, 
further  back  along  which  line  the  younger  embryo  in  general 
goes,  and  there  are  physical  peculiarities  of  the  new-born  child 
(the  form  of  the  nose,  the  use  of  the  hand,  etc.)  which  let  us 
compare  man  with  monkeys  now  existing.  So  marked  are 
some  of  these  resemblances  that  the  term  'little  monkey,' 
when  we  take  into  consideration  the  form,  aspect,  actions, 
movements,  etc.,  of  very  young  children,  seems  often  not  out 
of  place  when  applied  to  them.  The  long  ancestry  of  man 
makes  it  probable  that  other  explanations  will  be  found  for 
some  of  the  peculiarities  in  question  than  the  atavistic  ones 
now  in  vogue,  especially  as  we  do  not  yet  know  the  exact 
lineage  of  the  human  species,  nor  have  the  phenomena  attend- 
ing the  numerous  rises  in  the  animal  scale,  below  the  change 
from  quadruped  to  biped,  been  as  yet  made  clearly  evident, 
while  concerning  the  latter  we  are  even  yet  largely  ignorant. 
The  question  of  degeneracy  and  abnormality  complicates  the 
matter,  some  authorities  holding  that  every  abnormality  present 
in  man  finds  its  analogue  in  some  condition  previously  existing 
in  some  creature  lower  in  the  scale  than  man  (muscles,  organs, 
bony  orifices,  joints,  etc.,  especially).  Very  many 'atavisms' 
are  of  little  or  no  importance  or  interest,  but  the  pads  on  the 
palms  of  the  hands  and  the  soles  of  the  feet  of  the  human 
fcetus  (the  relics  of  the  walking-pads  of  quadrupeds),  which 
can  still  be  discerned  in  the  adult;  the  'clinging  power'  of 
new-born  infants  (so  monkey-like) ;  the  quadrupedal  attitudes 
of  the  child  before  it  can  maintain  the  erect  position;  the 


SUMMARY   AND   CONCLUSION  46 1 

peculiarities  of  manual  development,  throwing,  grasping,  etc.  ; 
prehensility  of  the  toes;  inability  of  the  human  being  generally 
to  swim  without  learning  (resulting  from  the  long  arboreal 
residence  of  his  immediate  animal  ancestors) ;  and  the  atavisms 
of  action  and  movement  are  of  very  great  interest  and  signifi- 
cance. The  atavisms  of  the  physiological  and  mental  order,  the 
so-called  '  psychic  atavisms '  especially — the  phenomena  of  the 
emotions,  fear,  anger,  love  present  innumerable  examples — are 
of  particular  importance  in  the  new  developments  of  education 
under  the  impetus  of  child-study.  Vegetarian  propensities, 
orchard-robbing,  dirt-eating,  biting,  scratching,  clawing  and 
pulling,  rolling  and  shuffling  about — the  thousand  and  one 
contortional  activities  of  childhood — 'teasing  and  bullying,' 
cruelty  in  children,  juvenile  crime,  the  games  and  plays  of  the 
young  are  all  more  or  less  atavistic,  although  too  much  has 
been  attributed  to  atavism  as  a  factor  in  the  production  of 
these  peculiarities. 

Many  of  the  so-called  atavistic  organs  and  characteristics 
of  man  exist  only  in  a  'reduced'  or  'rudimentary'  state,  for 
the  evolution  of  the  human  species  has  not  progressed  merely 
by  the  acquisition  of  new  characters,  but  also  by  the  loss  of 
old  ones.  It  would  seem  almost  as  if  every  new  development 
was  possible  only  through  preparation  for  it  by  the  abolition  of 
some  already  existing  peculiarities.  The  body  of  man  and  the 
body  social  abound  in  the  relics  of  such  disappearing  charac- 
teristics, which  are  probably  incapable  of  re-development,  but 
may  occasionally  be  used,  when  not  too  'rudimentary,'  as  vents 
or  safety-valves  for  the  organism.  That  organs  or  character- 
istics, which  have  entirely  disappeared,  may  reappear  again  is 
not  beyond  all  possibility,  although  doubted  by  many  authori- 
ties, except  in  cases  of  abnormality  and  degeneration.  Regres- 
sion and  atrophy  often  open  up  the  way  for  new  organs,  new 
functions,  new  ideas,  and  new  ideals  in  man,  and  the  '  piece  of 
divinity  in  us'  keeps  evolution  alive.  The  accommodation  of 
man  to  the  erect  position,  which  is  not  yet  perfectly  accom- 
plished, and  the  evolutionary  effects  of  the  human  characters 
per  se  are  creating  new  and  important  dispositions  which  are 
rendering  both  physical  and  mental  atavisms  of  less  and  less 
importance,  for  Nature  is  very  careful  to  preserve  the  really 
necessary  and  essential  organs  and  characters  of  body  and 
mind  alike  from  too  much  atavism  and  too  much  degeneracy. 
Very  many  atavistic  peculiarities  never  survive  until  manhood 


462  THE   CHILD 

and  womanhood,  while  not  a  few  others  disappear  even  before 
the  birth  of  the  child,  yet  others  being  scarcely  discernible  even 
in  the  embryo.  Many  mental  atavisms  also  fail  to  extend  over 
more  than  the  period  of  childhood  or  youth,  and  the  prolonga- 
tion of  human  infancy  that  has  taken  p'ace  in  the  course  of  the 
race's  history  does  not  appear  to  have  exerted  a  very  marked 
effect  upon  the  increase  of  the  atavistic  phenomena  of  that 
period. 

In  '  metopism,'  the  persistence  of  the  frontal  suture,  we 
have  an  example  of  what  has  been  termed  'regression,'  'atav- 
ism,' 'abnormality,'  etc.,  although,  instead  of  being  a  mark  of 
inferiority,  it  seems  rather  one  of  superiority.  Children, 
woman,  and  a  minority  of  individuals  in  the  highest  races, 
seem  to  point  the  way  of  evolution  here.  The  human  brain  is 
still  growing,  and  what  has  been  termed  a  regression  towards 
a  piscine  cranial  characteristic  is  really  the  response  made  tc 
this  cerebral  growth  by  the  cranial  cover,  which  has  not  yel 
settled  into  solid  fixity.  Nature  is  finding  a  way  here  by  which 
the  large-brained  may  comfortably  survive  and  the  development 
of  the  brain  in  the  anterior  portion  of  the  skull,  which  the 
formation  of  the  face  has  kept  from  attaining  its  full  growth, 
proceed  with  as  little  hindrance  as  possible.  Both  in  the 
individual  and  in  the  race,  here  as  elsewhere,  the  bonus  is 
bestowed  upon  higher  intelligence,  in  so  far  as  it  is  related  to 
greater  cerebral  activity  and  growth.  One  might  say  that  this 
single  characteristic  of  '  metopism,' which  the  foetus  and  the 
young  child  possess  and  which  is  now  in  process  of  trans- 
ference to  the  adult  and  to  the  race,  outweighs  a  hundred 
or  more  '  atavisms,'  whose  bearing  upon  the  future  of  the  race 
and  of  the  individual  is  infinitesimal  if  not  altogether  nil.  And 
there  are  other  peculiarities  also,  not  looked  upon  as  regres- 
sions and  atavisms,  which  may  turn  out,  like  '  metopism,'  to  be 
distinctly  progressive  phenomena  of  human  evolution. 

The  juxtaposition  of  'women  and  children  '  in  folk  lore  and 
proverb,  common  to  all  quarters  of  the  globe,  and  the  doctrine 
of  their  parallelism  in  inferiority,  upon  which  that  juxta-posi- 
tion  was  based,  do  not  any  longer  commend  themselves  to  the 
scientific  mind.  Abundant  evidence  is  now  forthcoming  that 
the  child  and  woman  (who,  in  the  best  racial  sense,  is  nearest 
him  physically  and  mentally)  are  the  real  bearers  of  evolution 
in  the  race.  Not  soulless,  as  some  ancient  theologians  and 
some  savage  tribes  have  believed,  but  bearinsr  the  soul  of  the 


SUMMARY   AND   CONCLUSION  4O3 

race,  woman,  the  surrogate  of  the  child,  has  been  shaping  man 
physically  and  mentally  in  her  image,  as  the  man  of  genius 
(not  the  insane  genius)  and  the  typical  urban  adult  (not  the 
weakling  or  the  degenerate)  demonstrate  in  their  somatic  and 
psychic  organism.  The  future  humanity  lies  more  in  woman 
than  in  man,  and  the  child  is  full  of  its  prophecy. 

There  is  no  danger  that  Nature  will  permit  woman  to 
overstep  herself  and,  degenerating,  drag  man  along  with  her. 
She  has  been  made  like  the  child  in  order  that  he  may  be  kept 
as  far  as  possible  like  himself.  When  the  'parasitic  forms' 
that  hold  her  back  have  been  cleared  away  and  woman  has 
been  given  '  space  to  burgeon  out  of  all  within  in  her,'  the  race 
will  be  nobler,  purer,  because,  through  her,  it  will  have  become 
more  childlike  in  the  highest  sen?e  of  the  term.  The  race 
will  be  at  its  best  when  woman  is  allowed  to  make  the  best 
of  life.  Many  of  the  differences  now  existing  between  the 
sexes  are  accidental  or  incidental,  the  result  of  certain  social 
systems,  of  the  subjection  of  woman  by  man,  and  of  her 
restraint  in  innumerable  directions,  but  her  'share  in  primi- 
tive culture,'  in  the  early  arts  and  social  institutions  of  man- 
kind, affords  abundant  proof  that  she  is  in  no  sense  'inferior 
to  man  ; '  moreover,  she  possesses  those  childlike  characters 
which  the  highest  genius  of  the  most  intellectual  races  of 
mankind  exhibits  in  all  ages.  Woman  may  indeed  be  said  to 
have  nursed  her  children,  domesticated  animals,  and  tamed 
man  with  equal  skill  and  wisdom.  Even  amid  the  wild 
emotion  of  the  sexual  congress  she  has  ruled  the  physically 
stronger  by  her  wit  and  her  humanity.  Some  have  unchival- 
rously  added  that  while  busied  with  drawing  man  away  from 
the  ape  and  the  brute  she  has  not  altogether  eliminated  the 
tiger  from  herself,  and  that  in  some  respects  she  has  proved 
a  better  leader  than  exemplar ;  the  conduct  of  women  towards 
their  own  sex  has  often  furnished  weapons  for  such  arguments. 

While  childhood  lasts,  the  general  traits,  both  physical  and 
psychic,  of  boys  and  girls  differ  less  than  is  commonly  supposed, 
and  co-education  in  these  early  years  has  distinct  advantages. 
So  also  has  the  employment,  during  this  period,  of  woman  as 
teacher,  or  of  those  men  whom  children  themselves  pick  out 
for  their  resemblance  to  themselves,  the  few  geniuses  of  peda- 
gogy who  are  not  women. 

All  over  the  world,  race  for  race,  women  and  children, 
to  a  certain  extent,  resemble  each  other;  they  are  the  most 


464  THE   CHILD 

generalised  forms  of  the  human  species.  Race-characteristics 
from  one  point  of  view  are  largely  arrests  of  development, 
changes  and  peculiarities  due  to  environment,  exercise,  activity, 
use  and  disuse  of  organs  and  functions,  nutritional  and  other 
physiological  or  physical  disturbances  of  the  organism,  which 
prevent  the  child  from  developing  to  the  full  along  the  lines  of 
its  generalities.  The  European  (or  American)  white  child,  the 
most  generalised  form  of  the  white  race,  may  itself  be  looked 
upon  as  a  very  specialised  form  of  the  Mongoloid  type,  the 
childlike  peculiarities  of  which,  in  adult  age,  are  very  numerous. 
The  great  possibilities  of  variation,  somatically,  which  lie  in  the 
child  make  it  probable  that  many  of  the  peculiarities  that  occur 
along  the  road  from  blondism  to  brunettism,  from  dolicho- 
cephalism  to  brachycephalism,  from  short  stature  to  high,  etc., 
may  be,  not  the  products  of  race-intermixture,  but  the  members 
of  a  normal  series  of  variations  from  the  original  type.  This  is 
of  great  importance  in  respect  to  the  connection  thought  to 
exist  between  physical  and  mental  development  both  in  the 
race  and  in  the  individual,  even  by  those  who  do  not  agree 
with  Cope's  view  that  every  physical  peculiarity  has  corre- 
sponding to  it  some  mental  peculiarity,  or  that  every  bone  in 
the  body  is  repeated  in  terms  of  mind. 

The  child,  in  the  helpless  infancy  of  his  first  years,  in  his 
later  activity  of  play,  in  his  Jia'wefe  and  genius,  in  his  repetitions 
and  recapitulations  of  the  race's  history,  in  his  wonderful  variety 
and  manifoldness,  in  his  atavisms  and  his  prophecies,  in  his 
brutish  and  in  his  divine  characteristics,  is  the  evolutionary 
being  of  our  species,  he  in  whom  the  useless  past  tends  to  be 
suppressed  and  the  beneficial  future  to  be  foretold.  In  a 
sense,  he  is  all. 

If  the  education  of  the  centuries  to  come  be  cast  in  the 
spirit  of  wisdom,  the  child  will  not,  as  now,  lose  so  much 
in  becoming  a  man,  the  man  or  woman  lose  so  much  through 
having  been  a  child,  but  the  childlike  elements  necessary  to 
the  race's  full  development  will  persist  to  the  greater  glory 
of  the  individual  and  the  perfection  of  mankind. 


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68ia.Wiedersheim,   R.,  The   Structure  of  Man,  an    Index  to  his 

Past  History.     London,  1895,  p.  227. 

682.  Wilk,  E.,  Die  Kulturstufen  in  Geometric.    Jahresb.  d.  Ver.f. 

wiss.  Piidag.,  Vol.  XXX.  (1898),  pp.  196-249. 

683.  Wille,  W.,  Die  Psy chosen  des  Piibertiitaltcrs.   Wien,  1 898,  p.  2 1 8. 

684.  Williams,  T.,  Was  Primitive  Man  a  Savage?     Smithson.Rep., 

1896,  pp.  541-548. 

685.  Wilson,  L.   N.,  Bibliography  of  Child-Study.     Pedag.  Scjn., 

Vol.  V.  (1898),  pp.  541-589.  Also  Reprint,  Worcester, 
Mass.,  p.  49. 

686. Bibliography   of  Child-Study  for  the   year    1898. 

Ibid.,  Vol.  VI.  (1899),  pp.  386-410.  Also  Reprint,  Worces- 
ter, Mass,  p.  26. 

687.  Wilson,  T.,  Prehistoric  Art.  Rep.  U.S.  Nat.  Mus.,  1896,  pp. 
325-644. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  495 

688.  Wittenberg,  H.,  unci  E.  Hiickstadt.  Dici::;csLhIccJiilich-sittlichen 

Ver halt  III  ssc  dcr  cvangclisc]ic7i  Laudbewo/iticr  tin  deutschen 
RcicJic.    I.  OstdcutscJdand.     Leipzig,  1895. 

689.  Wolff,  Fanny  E.,  A  Boy's  Dictionary.     Child-Study  Motithly. 

Vol.  III.  (1897),  pp.  141-150. 

690.  Wood,  W.,  Ideals  of  Life :  Hiivian  Perfection^  how  to  attain  it. 

N.Y.,  1892. 

691.  YODER,  A.  H.,  The   Study   of  the    Boyhood  of  Great  Men. 

Pedag.  Sem.,  Vol.  111.  (1894),  pp.  134-156. 

692.  Young,  T.   G.,    Oft    Centenarians  and   the  Duration  of  the 

Human  Race.     London,  1899,  p.  145. 

693.  Zanardelli,  M.,  L'origine  du  language   expliquee   par  une 

nouvelle  theorie.      Bull.  Soc.  d'Anthr.  de  Bruxelles,  Vol. 
VII.  (1888-89),  pp.  221-241. 

694.  Zellc,    L.   J.,    Lcs    Orangs-Koubous.       Bull.    Soc.    d'Anthr. 

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695.  Zichy,  T.,  Familien  typus  und  Familienahnlichkeiten.     Corrbl. 

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p.  66. 


INDEX 


Abstraction,  334. 

Adolescence  in  various  animals,  7. 

^Esthetics,  primitive,  183 ;  of  children, 
1S8. 

Age  changes,  100. 

Alvarez,  73. 

Analogy,  love  of,  321. 

Anger,  270. 

Animal  compared  to  human  infancy,  3. 

Ape  and  infant,  29  et  seq. 

Appelius,  8g. 

Aschrott,  90. 

Atavism,  219  ci  seq;  psychic,  254;  ali- 
mentary, 255;  dirt,  257;  mimetic, 
258  ;  genital,  238  ;  cruelty,  259  ;  mis- 
cellaneous, 263. 

Australian  onomatopoeia,  115. 

Auto-erotism,  404. 

Baker,  F.,  232 

Barnes,  E..  88. 

Barnes,  M.  S.,  87. 

Birth,  man  at,  i. 

Body,  in  children  and  savages,  sense  of, 

314- 
Bolton,  F.  E.,  224. 
Bos,  61. 

Buckman,  S.  S.,  227. 
Bull-roarer,  274. 
Bullying,  262. 
Burk,  F.  L.,  262. 

Camerer,  72. 

Chrisman,  O.,  86,  136. 

Christopher,  W.  S.,  74. 

Civilisation  and  food,  435. 

Clicks,  131. 

Clouston,  74. 

Colour  sense  in  infancy,  78. 

Colozza's  play  theory,  14. 

Compayr^,  362. 

Compwund  words,  145. 

Corporal  punishment,  388. 

Counting,  316. 

Criminal  anthropology,  354  et  seq. 

Criminality  in  childhood,  89,  367. 

Cruelty,  259. 

Cry  as  origin  of  language,  119. 

Culture-epoch  theory,  56. 

Curiosity,  344. 

Gushing,  242. 


Dancing,  iSi. 

Degerando,  108. 

Delaunay,  G. ,  100. 

Demolins,  64. 

Dendro-psychoses,  228. 

Dolls,  276. 

Dress,  atavism  of,  280. 

Dramatic  art,  109. 

Drawings  of  children,  190  et  seq.,  453. 

Education,  by  play,  17,  and  ciime,  393. 

Ellis,  Havelock,  on  modesty,  2S1  ;  on 
criminality  in  children,  361  ;  on 
secondary  sexual  character,  398  ;  on 
sexual  inversion  and  autoerotism, 
404  ;  on  sexual  diflTerentiation,  417  ; 
on  position  of  woman,  440. 

Erect  posture,  235. 

Fears,  265  et  seq. 

Fickleness,  347. 

Fishing,  279. 

Fcetal  attitude,  248. 

Food  and  civilisation,  435. 

Fritsch,  435. 

Froebel's  play  theory,  13. 

Games,  of  savages,  21 ;  of  children,  275.  ■ 

Garbini,  77,  91. 

Genital  atavisms,  258. 

Genius,  35,  40  ;  its  normality,  45. 

Gestation  periods  in  different  animals,  3. 

Gesture,  109,  no. 

Giuffrida-Ruggeri,  83. 

Groos's  theory  of  play,  25. 

Guibert,  81. 

Gulick,  L.,  75. 

Gutsmuths's  play  theorj',  11. 

Hale,  135,  137. 

Hall,  Stanley,  on  sense  of  self,  228 ;  on 
fears,  266 ;  on  anger,  270 ;  on  chil- 
dren's lies,  382. 

Hartwell,  CM.,  75. 

Hegel,  56. 

Helplessness,  ethical  import  of  infantile,  4. 

Harder,  55. 

Hrdlicka,  on  art  and  literature  in  mentally 
abnormal,  157  ;  on  difference  between 
white  and  negro  children,  433  ;  on 
defective  children,  439. 


497 


498 


THE   CHILD 


Huart,  72. 
Hunting,  279. 
Hutchinson,  Woods,  57. 
Hydro- psychoses,  224. 

Ideals  of  children,  312. 

Idleness  and  crime,  369. 

Imagination,  development  of,  83 ;  in  chil- 
dren, 324. 

Incubation  periods,  3. 

Imitation,  306,  371. 

Improvidence,  350. 

Infancy  in  man  and  animals,  duration  of, 
3 ;  defective  sense  in,  77 ;  colour 
sense  in,  78. 

Infant  and  ape,  29  et  seq. 

Insane  as  compared  to  child  and  savage, 
»57.  299. 

Japanese  onomatopes,  114. 

Kiss,  origin  of,  259. 
Kite-flying.  275. 
Kline,  L.  \V.,  83. 
Krauss,  W.  C.,  75. 
Kurella,  397. 
Kussmaul,  93. 

Lacassagne,  70. 

Lesshaft,  80. 

Lessing,  55. 

Linguistic  evolution,  93. 

Lombroso,  Cesare,  355. 

Lombroso,  Paola,  on  play,  17  ;  on  gesture 

language,    113  ;    on   misoneism,  327  ; 

on  children's  morals,  391. 
Lukens,  on  origin   of  language,    123;   on 

classification  of  children's  words,  143  ', 

on  art  of  childhood,  198. 
Lying  in  children,  381  et  seq. 

Macdonald,  a.,  72. 

Magic  and  art,  200. 

Mantegazza,  on  emotional  expression,  69  ; 

on  gesture,  109;  on  psychic  atavism, 

?54- 
Married  couples,  resemblance  between,  32. 
Marro,  412. 
Mason,  O.  T.,  415. 
Masturbation,  404. 
Memory,  341. 

Mental  characters  of  savages,  296. 
Metopic  suture,  283. 
Misoneism,  327,  365. 
Modesty,  281. 
Morals  of  children,  391. 
Morgan's  views,  57. 
Morrison,  W.  D.,  377. 
Muscular  anomalies,  235. 
^lusic,   origin  of,    174;    effects    of,    197; 
primitive,    180;    and    children,    1S2 ; 
universality  of,  452. 
Mythology  of  children,  317, 

Name-giving,  149  et  seq. 
Nature,  feeling  for,  327. 
Negro  children,  433. 
Nipples,  supernumerary,  400. 

Oi.FACTivE  sense  in  infancy,  77. 
Onomatopoeia,  113  et  seq. 


Originality,  349. 
Ornamentation,  185. 
Orophily,  320. 

Passion,  347. 

Pelvis,  survivals  in,  234. 

Play,  the  meaning  of,  ro  et  seq.' 

Posture,  erect,  235  ;  fuetal,  248 ;  in  child- 
birth, 249  ;  in  fatigue  and  excitement, 
250. 

Powell,  J.  W.,60. 

Precocity,  in  intelligence,  38  et  seq. ;  of 
genius,  42  ;  sexual,  408. 

Prehensile  foot,  246. 

Pronouns,  144. 

Prostitution,  370. 

Puberty,  linguistic  development  at,  139; 
changes  at,  411. 

Punishment,  corporal,  388. 

QUANTZ,  228. 

Races,  children  of  lower,  34. 
Reduplication,  124. 
Religion  in  childhood,  86. 
Ribot,  86. 

Right-handedness,  241. 
Rolnnson,  Louis,  229,  231. 
Rudimentary  oigans,  223. 

Sanford,  E.  C,  67. 

Savages,  play  among,  20. 

Schiller's  play  theory,  10. 

Scott,  Colin,  103. 

Secondary  sexual  characters,  397. 

Secret  languages,  136. 

Sexual  perversions,  402  ;  inversion,  404  ; 
precocity,  408  ;  sexual  differences,  in 
development,  409 ;  in  relation  to 
civilisation,  417  ;  list  of  chief,  418  ; 
in  childhood,  423. 

Sigismund,  B.,  92. 

Sign  language,  107,  in, 

.Skeuomorphism,  197. 

Songs  of  children,  276. 

Springer,  71. 

Starbuck,  E.  D  ,  87. 

Steinmetz,  379. 

Story-telling,  345. 

Suckling  period,  duration  of,  5. 

Suggestion,  305,  371. 

Suicide,  379 

Swimming,  252. 

Symbolism,  322. 

Tadoo,  309. 
Tarde,  306. 
Teasing,  262. 
Tigerstedt,  71. 
Truancy,  88. 
Turner,  Sir  W.,  236. 

Verrier,  70. 

Viscera,  survivals  in,  234. 

Vitali,  423. 

Vocabulary,  extent  of,  160. 

Vocal  evolution,  91. 

Vowel  speech,  127. 

Wallasciiek,  180. 
Weapons,  273. 


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